On the seventh day of October in the year of our Lord 1984 the first regular episode of Murder, She Wrote aired. Unlike the pilot episode of the series, it was set in Cabot Cove and was called Deadly Lady.

The lady to which the title is referring is a hurricane as the giant wave in the overly dark opening scene suggests. (My guess is that it’s so dark in order to disguise a model set; the coastline of Cabot Cove was played by Mendocino, California and it would probably be difficult to get a hurricane at a convenient time in California, since they don’t occur on the west coast of the USA. (To be fair, they can get cyclones, which are basically the same thing, but waiting around for one would be impractical and getting helicopter photography during one would be of dubious safety.))

After the establishing shot and opening credits we go to Jessica typing on her typewriter.

The lights flicker, then go out. As Jessica gets some matches and an oil lamp, we hear knocking and a male voice. Jessica goes to the door and opens it. It turns out to be a friend of hers named Ethan. She upbraids him that he shouldn’t be out of doors on a night like this.

He replies, “I know that, woman. You think I’m a nitwit?” She replies that he shouldn’t ask questions he doesn’t want answered, and after a bit of banter we find out that he’s here to check on Jessica and provide some exposition. It’s a real bad hurricane and the coast guard is picking up signals from some fools in a yacht. No one can get out to them before the storm clears, so they’re on their own.

His exposition delivered, he bids Jessica a good night and leaves to go to his own bed.

The next scene opens with clear blue skies and Jessica taking a morning jog along the docks. She meets a fisherman sorting through something who tells her that Ethan went out about an hour ago to see if he could help the people on the yacht. He couldn’t say what happened to them because he lost radio contact with them. Jessica asks him to have Ethan call her when he gets back.

She then jogs home to find a strange man trimming her hedges.

She tries to explain to him that her yard is private property but he only remonstrates with her about having let weeds get a toe-hold in her garden. His name is Ralph and he’s mighty hungry but doesn’t believe in taking handouts, so he’ll happily work for his breakfast. After a bit of discussion, they agree and Jessica cooks him some eggs and bacon after he finishes with the hedges.

As they sit down to eat Ralph claims to have been hoboing around for about as long as he can remember, but he’s not a bum, he works for what he gets. He then recognizes her from a book on her counter, saying that he read it and it was a good book.

Jessica tells him to sit down to breakfast as she points out the problems with his story. First, the book is a pre-publication copy and not available to the public yet. Second, his clothes may be faded but they are exquisitely tailored. Third, the term is “boin'” not “hoboing.” Fourth, there’s an imprint on his wrist from where a wristwatch used to be. She asks where he has it stashed.

He grins and pulls the watch out. It’s rather expensive looking. He says that he didn’t steal it and Jessica replies that she didn’t think that he did.

Ralph comes clean or makes up a more plausible story, we’ll find out later. He has been hoboing, just not for very long. He was just forced into retirement and decided that he wanted to see America “from the ground up.”

He asks if Jessica is mad and she replies that she’s willing to stick to their arrangement if he wants to do work around the house. They’re then interrupted by a call from Amos Tupper. Ethan just came in with the yacht and something peculiar has happened. Murder, peculiar. Jessica says she’ll be right there. Ralph is surprised to hear about a murder in this town. Jessica excuses herself and Ralph says that he’ll keep busy outside, but watches her go out of her window and doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to get outside.

Jessica gets down to the dock and after a bit of pointless bickering between Ethan and Amos, Amos explains to Jessica what’s up. Some rich fellow, by the name of Steven Earl—he sells cosmetics and Jessica recognizes the name, “Mark of Earl”—was out sailing with his four daughters and last night, during the storm when… Ethan interrupts him demanding that the “girls” tell their story and Jessica concurs.

Amos agrees and introduces Jessica to the “girls” and asks them to tell Jessica their story, but Jessica insists on meeting them first.

First is Nancy Earl, who goes by Nan.

Jessica admires her sweater and asks if she knitted it herself. She didn’t, but she did design it. Jessica thinks it’s lovely. Next Maggie Earl comes forward and introduces herself.

She’s read Jessica’s latest book and it was a hoot. Jessica thanks her, saying that it was a hoot to write. Then comes Lisa Earl Shelby. Her husband has been notified and is on his way.

Jessica thinks this is nice. And finally there’s Grace Earl Lamont.

Her husband hasn’t been notified and isn’t coming. She last saw him four years ago.

Which rounds out the lot. Jessica then suggests that they would be more comfortable “inside,” I presume because it’s cheaper to film indoors than on a dock.

Anyway, they left Bridgeport (I assume, Connecticut) four days ago. They thought surely the storm would blow out to sea, this far north, but when they realized their mistake it was too late. Around midnight they were huddled in the cabin in their boat when they realized that their father was still topside. Lisa was the first one up, then Grace after her. Lisa was almost to her father when Grace saw a huge wave come over the boat and knock their father off.

It then turns out that we’re here because Grace asked the Sheriff how soon they could expect a coroner’s inquest, which he thought a mite suspicious. Given the suspicious circumstances, he’s not very inclined to hold an inquest until he has a body. Ethan says that, given the tides, the body should show up within a day or so.

The four daughters walk off. Amos asks Jessica what she thinks and she says that she doubts that any of them will be wearing black for long. Amos asks about the death—one hundred million dollars is a whale of a motive. Ethan accuses him of reading too many of Jessica’s books, but Amos retorts that he hasn’t read any of them.

Jessica leaves them to invite the four women to stay at her house, but they decline as they already have hotel reservations. Most of them walk off but Jessica gets a moment with Grace. She extends her condolences and Grace says that none of them will miss their father. He broke up her marriage and has prevented Nan from getting into any relationships, and turned Maggie into “a dull hausfrau.” There’s really no love lost between any of them. She then excuses herself.

Jessica watches her go with a look of perplexity.

And we go to commercial break.

When we get back, Jessica comes home on her bicycle and goes into her house. She calls to Ralph but he’s not inside. A phone call comes in and it’s Latisha from the phone company letting Jessica know the charges for her call to Paris. She finds Ralph outside resting in her hammock and listening to Mozart on his walkman since the weeding was done and there’s not much else he can do without supplies. She asks him about the call. At $9.97, it must have been a short call to France, she says. He clarifies that it’s Paris, Kentucky—he has a friend who is a horse breeder down there, and he will take care of the charges.

He then takes her to look at some rotten wood on the inside of the house which needs some putty and paint. He can fix it but it will take $10-$15 in supplies. Jessica says it’s a bargain and goes to get the money. While she does this, Ralph admires a pipe that was sitting out on a table. It belonged to Frank—Jessica’s husband who died years ago. He remarks, pensively, “I guess besides a good meal, the thing I enjoy most is a good pipe.” After confirming that it was her husband’s, he compliments Frank’s taste in pipes. It’s an excellent Meerschaum.

Jessica then offers it to him, perhaps because she was touched by the sappy background music which has been playing since Ralph started looking at the pipe. He tries to refuse but she presses him. “I want you to have it. Better you should smoke it than it should sit there gathering dust.” She looks like she’s about to cry and hurries off.

Ralph puts it in his pocket and the scene then shifts to a helicopter landing in a grassy field. Lisa runs up to it and greets her husband. They proceed immediately to the Sheriff’s office.

His concern is that the death of Steven Earl could throw Mark of Earl cosmetics into a financial tail-spin. He wants an immediate inquest so that the reins of leadership can smoothly pass on to Steven Earl’s successor.

This attitude—that corporations are like feudal baronies on the borderlands and that stability comes from the loyalty of the soldiers to the individual under whose banner they will fight—is something we’re going to see a fair amount of on Murder, She Wrote. I don’t know how much the writers actually believed it and how much it was just an excuse to move the plot along because they need dramatic tension. In reality, large profitable companies do not live by their day-to-day stock prices and those stock prices can’t lose 99% of their value from a few days or even a few weeks of uncertainty in who the CEO is. Companies—and especially large, established companies—take a long time to develop their products and marketing campaigns. It is possible for an army to get a significant advantage over another because uncertainty in leadership causes one to stay where it is rather than repositioning itself when the one with active leadership moves, but there’s nothing that can happen to a large cosmetics company that requires a response within hours or it could be devastated. It’s just not a thing.

Anyway, Amos stands on his insistence that there will be no inquest until they have a body, and we go back to Jessica talking with Ralph.

Ralph tells Jessica about how he lost his wife years ago, and for a long time couldn’t bear to think about it. He asks if she has children and she replies that she and Frank were never blessed that way. He repeats the word blessed and chuckles. He then gets up and leaves because he has things to do, bidding Jessica a good night. After he leaves she goes to do the dishes and after unplugging the drain in her sink sees the water swirling down the drain and gets an inspiration. She runs over to the docks where she finds Ethan. She needs his help and advice. The help seems to largely consist of letting her have a map and a compass, which she uses to draw a circle on the map.

Ethan’s advice seems to primarily consist of saying, “Well, I’ll be a skinned lizard” and then asking Jessica how she knew. Her answer is, “Didn’t it seem strange to you that those girls knew exactly where they were in the middle of a storm?”

A call to Amos Tupper and a trip over to the local hotel later and Jessica confronts the four sisters with the fact that at midnight, in the location they said they were at (3 miles due east of Monhegan Island), they would have been in the eye of the hurricane and there would have been no waves to sweep anyone over. Lisa makes the extremely obvious statement that they must have been mistaken as to their location but Maggie won’t have it. She confesses to murdering her father.

Their father didn’t die the night before, but rather two nights before. Maggie and her father were alone on deck, he was drunk, and they fought as usual. She has a gun in her purse she keeps for protection and when he came at her she fired, twice. When the sisters got up on deck there was blood everywhere and his pipe was still warm, but he wasn’t there. Amos arrests her.

Amos, as we will get to know about him, will arrest anyone at the drop of a hat. That said, this time it seems pretty justified.

Jessica isn’t satisfied but can’t explain it. Then a newspaperman comes it with a fresh edition about the millionaire who drowned. Jessica looks in it and sees the photo of Steven Earl—an old photo, taken from the dusk jacket of his autobiography called Grease Paint Millionaire about how he started as an actor and got into makeup almost by accident. Jessica asks if the book was old and the newspaperman says perhaps twenty years out of print.

Jessica goes to her house (with Ethan) looking for Ralph but can’t find him. Some comedic misunderstandings later, Jessica explains to Ethan that Ralph is Steven Earl. Ethan thinks that she’s batty, but agrees to help her look around Cabot Cove for him.

Unfortunately, Ralph/Steven Earl is found by some kids the next morning.

And with the reveal of the body we go to the midpoint commercial break.

When we get back Nan and Lisa identify the body with Amos Tupper. Then Jessica arrives  as they’re leaving the chapel where the body is. Then a car screams up and parks. A man gets out who Nan recognizes as “Terry.” He says that he just heard the news in Kentucky and flew right in. Lisa explains to Jessica that he isn’t a relative but would like to be—about a year ago he and Nan were engaged and then he just walked out of her life.

Jessica goes inside and identifies the body as Ralph. This angers her and she swears vengeance in her folksy way.

Then there’s an unpleasant scene between Lisa and her Husband in their hotel room which doesn’t really advance the plot but is there to make them both seem like suspects.

Then we go to the Sheriff’s station and he brings Maggie out to interview her with Jessica present. He tells her that the body was found, shot twice in the chest, just as she described. She’s shocked and says that it’s impossible. He can’t be dead. He left the yacht on an inflatable raft he hid away before they left. It—the trip, everything—was all a scheme to unmask a fortune hunter named Terry Jones.

A year ago he paid Terry half a million dollars to disappear but after suffering a heart attack six months ago he was afraid Terry would show up again when he was dead. So they cooked up this scheme in order to lure Terry out of the woods so Steven could prove to Nan what a terrible guy Terry is. How, Maggie does not say, because I can see no plausible way for that to work, especially without revealing how Steven paid him to leave, which he wanted to keep from Nan. “My beloved daughter, I faked my death, causing you tremendous grief, in order to lure your former fiance to come back to you, which he did. Don’t you see how this proves he is the one who doesn’t really love you?” He could try to gussy that up, but it does not seem plausibly persuasive. Nor loving.

Anyway, Amos isn’t buying any of it but Jessica is, and leaves Amos to wait for the coroner to tell him what Jessica already knows. She bicycles over to the hotel to look for Terry Jones but he and Nan went to the church about twenty minutes ago. As Jessica leaves she encounters Maggie, who was released because the shots that killed her father didn’t come from her gun. Lisa’s husband tries to tell Jessica to butt out of a family affair, but Jessica retorts that Steven Earl was no stranger to her. She wishes him a good day in a way that makes it clear that she very much hopes he will have a bad day—somewhere far away from her.

We then see Terry talking with Nan in a cemetery. He claims to her that he left because her father threatened to ruin him if he didn’t. She’s not buying it.

He proposes to her and she doesn’t know what she wants to do. She says she needs to be alone and walks off.

As she does, Jessica rides up on her bicycle and greets Terry. With little formality, she tells him that he lied when he said he heard about the death this morning. In reality, he heard it from a phone call yesterday from Steven Earl. He replies that the guy on the phone said he was a reporter, but it might have been Earl—he was a good actor. Terry explains that he flew into Portland last night and to his surprise found Nan waiting for him. Maggie had told her about their father’s plan to trap Terry. He says that some people, like Maggie, secretly believe in him. He and Nan spent the night together at a hotel near the airport. She left early in the morning, he slept in. When he heard the news of Steven Earl’s real death, he immediately came to be by Nan’s side.

Jessica then goes to the Sheriff’s office but Amos isn’t there. She overhears a conversation with one of his deputies and someone else on the radio that Amos is down at Cotter’s Beach with a search party because he got an anonymous note shoved in the mailbox which said that there were funny goings-on at about 10pm the night before.

Jessica goes down to Cotter’s Beach and asks Amos to see the note, which he shows her, but the camera does not show us. Then one of the searchers runs up because he found a pair of new-looking pink high-heel shoes half-buried in the sand. One had a heel broken off of it. Jessica remarks that half-buried means half-exposed and scampers off. After a few moments of searching next to where the shoes were, she finds the missing heel.

Amos praises Jessica for finding it and says that all they have to do now is to find to whom the shoes belong. Jessica says that without doubt they belong to Nan and we go to commercial break.

When we come back from commercial break, Jessica and Amos are in Nan’s room as Nan is searching for the shoes. She never unpacked them and yet is somehow certain that they were here last night. Amos shows her the shoes and she identifies them as hers—she designed them and had them custom made.

Jessica asks Nan to try them on. Nan doesn’t understand, but complies. Presumably this is so that Jessica can get a look at the bottom of Nan’s foot (the shoe fits, but we knew that before she tried it on):

I assume that the thing Jessica was looking for are scratches or something like that, since if Nan was there and broke a heel and lost both of her shoes she’d have had to scramble over the rocks barefoot and she’s a city slicker with, presumably, tender feet. Let’s zoom in:

I can’t see any sign of scrambling over cliffs, though the resolution really isn’t wonderful for that. Presumably Jessica will confirm this soon. Anyway, Amos takes the fact that the shoe fits to mean that he has to arrest her for the murder of her father. Jessica objects saying that Nan isn’t guilty, then gets an idea and advises Amos to take Nan into custody. Jessica then asks Amos and Nan to keep the evidence absolutely confidential.

The scene then shifts to the Sheriff’s office, where Terry Jones shows up, angry that Nan has been arrested. He protests that there’s no way Nan could have killed her father because she was with him. Amos suggests that perhaps they were in it together. The Portland hotel desk clerk saw them check in but didn’t see either of them leave. They easily could have snuck back to Cabot Cove and committed the murder together. Terry starts to panic and says that he didn’t have anything to do with Steven Earl’s death, but if Nan did kill him before she came to Terry, he would have no idea. Amos says that he better not, since in Maine being an accessory to murder is about as bad as being the murderer. But as long as he’s here, Amos sees no reason why Terry can’t see Nan. Terry then excuses himself, saying that he has business to take care of, and beats a hasty retreat.

Amos then goes to the door to the jail cells, which this conversation took place next to, opens it, and asks Nan (who walks out) whether she heard it. Finally disillusioned about Terry, Nan replies, “Yeah. I heard it.”

The scene then shifts to the hotel, where Lisa, her husband, Maggie, and Grace come back, all of them laughing and perhaps a bit drunk. Lisa’s husband is shouting in jubilation. They’ve all been celebrating Maggie’s exoneration. Jessica breaks the news about Nan’s arrest. When asked why, Jessica lies and tells them that the Sheriff found a heel from a shoe, which Nan admitted was hers, on the beech very near where the body of their father was found, but the shoes are missing. Jessica then says she knows how sisters are, and how they trade clothes, and asks if it’s possible if one of them wore those shoes.

Lisa asks if Jessica wants to search their rooms and Jessica says, “something like that.” Lisa replies not without a warrant, and not by Jessica, then leaves with her husband. Grace says that she has nothing to hide and so Jessica can search her room if she wants. Maggie says that Jessica can search her room, too, but she and Nan are different shoe sizes and besides, she doesn’t wear pink.

Later, Maggie walks Jessica out of the hotel and Jessica tells Maggie that she’s exhausted and will sleep in late. She also says that the Sheriff will be over later and asks Maggie to give the Sheriff a bag that she was holding (we were not shown what was in it).

The scene then shifts to Jessica’s house where a gloved hand breaks the window to Jessica’s door, reaches through, and opens it. The dark figure who belongs to the gloved hand then slowly and softly walks in and starts walking upstairs but stops when it hears creaking. It reverses course and then Jessica calls out, “that wasn’t very thoughtful.”

The figure walks up and we see who it is.

I like the TV burglar outfit Maggie is wearing. Also, this turns the title of the episode into a curious pun.

She asks, “You were expecting me, weren’t you?”

Jessica replies, “You know I was.”

In fact, Maggie wasn’t sure. But she looked inside of the bag and found a blue heel to a shoe and figured that it was a message. She asks if she slipped and Jessica points out that she said that she doesn’t wear pink, but Jessica never mentioned the color of the shoes.

Jessica adds that if it makes Maggie feel any better, she knew Maggie was guilty because everything pointed to an obvious framing of Nan. Maggie objects that it wasn’t obvious; Nan and Terry could have done it. Jessica points out that the shoes prove that she didn’t; had she lost her shoes her feet would have been scratched, which she found they were not when she asked Nan to try on the shoes.

Anyway, once it was clear that Nan was being framed, it was also clear who did it: the only person with the requisite knowledge to set up the frame by telling Nan about Terry Jones’ arrival at Portland.

Maggie tells Jessica that she’s very clever but Jessica demurs. She was merely logical; Maggie was the clever one. Confessing to the murder knowing that the police investigation would exonerate her was brilliant.

Maggie then explains her motive. She spent her whole life taking care of her father, making a home for him, keeping the peace, and for what? The only one who her father actually loved was Nan. After a bit of crying, she apologizes to Jessica for having to murder her in order to get away with the murder of her father. She explains her plan: it will look like she surprised a burglar who killed her in a struggle.

Jessica chides her for this plan. For one thing, they don’t have burglars in Cabot Cove. Second, and perhaps more to the point, the moment the back window was broken she called Sheriff Tupper, who has been listening in to the whole conversation. Jessica then moves some dead flowers in a wicker basket to reveal the phone off its hook.

I must confess, given how low they were speaking, Amos couldn’t have heard much, but this is enough to dissuade Maggie from murdering Jessica. Jessica picks up the phone and says that Maggie wants to give herself up, then hands Maggie the phone so she can confirm this with him.

The scene shifts to the next morning, at the hotel, where Nan and Jessica are talking as Nan goes to her taxi. She tells Jessica that she understands how her sisters feel but her father was actually a decent man. Jessica concurs, reminding Nan that she did know him, if only for a short time. Jessica summarizes, saying that in her experience if you give love, that’s what you get back. Nan laughs and says, “Not always.” She then considers that her father was right about Terry and she didn’t see it, but Jessica tells her not to be too hard on herself. Terry was a very clever young man and she pities whoever gets him next.

Nan bids her farewell and gets in her taxi, then Ethan pulls up in his pickup truck and offers to take Jessica out to fish for sea bass, as he’s heard that they’re biting. Jessica accepts and tells Ethan that she’s going to teach him some of the finer points of deep-sea angling. As the pickup drives off, Ethan asks if that means that she’s going to want him to bait her hooks, too, and she replies, “Of course. You always do, don’t you?”

Then we go to credits.

This was a very interesting episode. While there was also a pilot episode that aired the week before, this was still very much an introductory episode. More, perhaps, than the pilot, since this episode took place in Cabot Cove while the pilot took place in New York City. That is arguable, since most Murder, She Wrote episodes don’t take place in Cabot Cove (in most seasons it’s between a quarter and a third), but still something to consider. Another sense in which this is an introductory episode is that it’s the first regular-length episode, so it’s the first time we’re seeing what the show is really going to be like. It’s also quite likely to be the first time many people saw the show since there are all sorts of reasons to not see the pilot. (Among other things, people would take their guesses as to what they would like when a new TV seasons rolled round but they might be disappointed and try other shows. Plus there would be recommendations from people who did watch the pilot, etc.)

This being an introductory episode manifests itself in all sorts of ways, but part of it is that they put a lot of effort into showing how clever Jessica is. In particular, she shows off her deductive skill far more than she would come to later. For example, before the first commercial break she tells Ralph why he’s “full of clam chowder” with a four-point list of observations. She sees through the sisters’ story about their father being washed away in the storm by plotting their location on a map with a compass. She rushes off and finds the missing heel from the shoes and off-handedly knows that they belong to Nan. And all this is well before she solves the mystery. In later episodes Jessica will do a fair amount of investigation, but it’s rare that the next bit of investigation comes from clever deduction from the previous piece of investigation. In this episode each step follows from Jessica having been clever in a way we can clearly see. I suspect that this faded in no small part because it’s hard to write, but that’s a pity because it’s a lot of fun.

There’s another interesting aspect to this being an introductory episode, which is that they’re trying to paint Jessica’s personality. I think you can really see the influence of Miss Marple on the initial conception of Jessica in this episode.

(This is probably a subject that merits its own post, but if you’re not aware: Miss Marple was one of the main inspirations for Jessica Fletcher. The creators acknowledge this if you watch the special features, but even without that, it would be obvious. Miss Marple was both an old woman who lived in a small, obscure village solving crimes and also an extremely popular detective. The last Miss Marple novel was published in 1976, a mere eight years before Murder, She Wrote first aired. There’s also an interesting connection with the title of Murder, She Wrote. There was a 1961 movie based upon the Miss Marple novel The 4:50 From Paddington which did not use the book’s title. Instead, it used the title: Murder, She Said.)

In contrast with later episodes, Jessica seems far more embedded in the Cabot Cove community. This is not so much about people knowing her, but rather that she seems to be a part of it, and more importantly, it seems to be a part of her.

Another interesting thing is that she seems to have small-town manners. Small town manners tend to be more oriented around building relationships because in a small town you’re fairly likely to see people again. Plus you meet few enough people you have the time and energy to spend on them. Cosmopolitan manners, by contrast, tend to assume more between people but at the same time have an emotional distance that is maintained because actually getting to know people or forming relationships is work that is quite likely to not pay off since for any given person you’re not very likely to ever see them again. Before too long, Jessica would have cosmopolitan manners, but in this episode she had small-town manners. You can see this in the way she insisted on being introduced to the four sisters before hearing their story. You can also see this—to some degree—in the way she related to Ralph. She had neither  cosmopolitan easiness nor cosmopolitan coldness.

When we come to the episode itself, it’s something of a mixed bag. The plot is interesting, though the events which form the mystery don’t hold together overly well. Starting with the boat trip: how did Steven Earl convince all four of his daughters to go on a boat trip with him? Nan might be willing to do it out of affection and Maggie did it as part of the plan to murder her father, but why on earth did Lisa or Grace consent to the trip?

Then we come to the faked death. I can’t help but ask why Steven Earl thought that faking his death was a good idea. In theory this was to draw Terry out of cover, but I can see no possible purpose drawing Terry out of cover would actually serve. Steven knew where Terry was—he had this phone number—so it wasn’t about finding Terry. And I don’t see any way this could possibly convince Nan that Terry was a bad guy. About the only possible good this could serve was proving to Steven that he still had to worry about Terry, but that’s really more about how Nan feels about Terry rather than whether Terry is interested in Nan. Further, the right way to handle that would be to set up something with his lawyers where Terry would get periodic payments, made by the lawyers, if he stayed away from Nan, so this could carry on after Steven’s death.

But if we pass over this and just accept that he wanted to fake his death, I can see no possible explanation for the faking of his death being done by pretending that Maggie shot him. Unless, of course, that wasn’t his plan but Maggie’s. She did this faking long after he had rowed away. It is possible that she was supposed to say that he had fallen overboard or something like that. He was long gone so she could say anything she wanted and since this was premeditated she could have brought the fake blood and then staged it as she described to Amos. The question is never asked, though Steven’s reaction to hearing that the supposed murder was actually just an accident makes this seem like it was not what was intended.

The character of Ralph/Steven Earl is another issue within this episode. Ralph was interesting, though that is limited by how much of what he said was lies. There’s the further problem that it’s hard to make the parent of bad children out to be sympathetic. Children are their own people, of course, and one bad child may be misfortune. Several bad children sounds like bad parenting. Especially when the children seem to have bad principles and worse manners. Basically, spoiled children have to be spoiled by someone, and there’s no way for that to happen which lets the father off the hook.

The murder itself was clever, and there were a decent number of twists and turns. They did a pretty good job of making Maggie the least likely suspect without making her being the murderer seem completely unbelievable. I’m not sure that Maggie hating her father made all that much sense, and I especially think that they never justified Grace thinking that their father ruined Maggie’s life. She told Jessica that he turned Maggie into a “Hausfrau” but I don’t see how he could have. It is not believable that Steven Earl was such a regular homebody that he was constantly around to dominate Maggie’s time, or that he kept an elaborate home which he made her constantly clean because he was too cheap to hire any help. It would make more sense that she tried to earn his love by being a “hausfrau” and it didn’t work and she resented him for it. To some degree they did hint at this in Maggie’s confession, though her saying, “I hated him for what he did to me” undermined that.

I think that this was less of a big deal here than it might be in later episodes because this episode was more about the investigation than it was about the murder.

The character of Amos Tupper is also curiously inconsistent in this episode. For most of it he seems annoyed by Jessica’s interference. This is hard to reconcile with the fact that Jessica is involved because he asked for her help. Even more, he told the sisters that Jessica is there because she’s a “good friend of mine who from time to time I like to look to for advice.”

Ethan is also a curious character. Clearly a long-time friend of Jessica’s, he’s got a great voice but it is annoying how much he bickers with everyone, especially Amos. To a great degree this was just the nature of television at the time. Conflict makes people less likely to change the channel, which was the all-pervading fear of TV writers.

One thing I think a pity is that Jessica didn’t have any female friends. I suspect that this was because male-female interactions always have a bit of electricity to them, even where they are completely non-sexual, in a way that male-male and female-female interactions don’t. That ever-present fear of the viewer changing the channel probably meant that the energy always needed to be turned up to 11.

That said, it’s possible that this hits differently, now, watching the episodes via DVD where I’m extremely unlikely to change the channel and there isn’t just one family TV that someone might want to change the channel on “just for a minute”. That makes for a different viewing environment, too. The overall more stressful environment of the one family TV in the living room was more stressful, and so the energy on everything being turned up probably seemed less unnecessarily high-energy. Oh well.

All told, as a first episode, I think that Deadly Lady was pretty good. Next week we’re going to San Francisco for Birds of a Feather where one of Jessica’s many nieces is going to get married.

On the twelfth day of January in the year of our Lord 1986, the Murder, She Wrote episode Trial By Error aired. It was the thirteenth episode of the second season. (I’m reviewing this one out of order because I just served on a jury, though in a civil trial, not a criminal trial, so I thought it would be fun to review this episode while the memory is still quite fresh.)

The show opens at the scene of an accident. A red sports car has slammed into a telephone pole. The driver is out, not very injured, and seems to have sustained only minor injuries. The passenger is his wife and is in very bad condition. There’s a tense moment as the rescuers use the jaws of life to remove the door so that they can get her out. When they get the door off, she’s alive but very injured.

She doesn’t seem able to move. They put her on a gurney and move her towards the ambulance. As they do, the distraught husband asks repeatedly if she’s going to die while no one answers him.

Laying on the gurney, she sobs to her husband, “I don’t understand.” He replies, “it was the kid on the bike. I swerved to avoid him.”

The scene then shifts to the hospital while some guy in green scrubs (possibly a doctor) talks to the distraught husband. He says that, according to the EMTs, he fractured his collarbone. The husband says that he’s fine. The doctor then asks the husband if he wants to be with his wife and he says no.

“I can’t look at her, knowing that I’m the one who…”

The doctor says that he understands. He then relays that if the guy’s wife wakes up, it won’t be for several hours. She does have a good chance of pulling through, but it’s also likely that she’ll never walk again due to severe spinal damage.

The husband, whose name turns out to be Mark Reynolds, exclaims, “Oh, my God!” and runs away.

We next see the husband in a bar. He takes a seat next to a woman in red, who is concerned for him.

She has absolutely enormous shoulder pads, since this is the mid 80s. As they’re talking to each other about the accident, a weird creepy guy comes into the bar and looks intently at them.

A few moments later, when a waiter comes up and asks for his order, he asks, “Who’s that talking to Becky Anderson?”

Several hours later Becky notices the time and says she has to go. She offers to give him a lift to the hospital but he says that he can’t face his wife until the morning. She then offers to make him a cup of coffee, and at first he refuses, but then he accepts and the two leave together.

The creepy guy comes and sits down where they were and we learn from the bartender that his name is Mr. Detweiler. He says that this looks like a sympathy jump in the making and the bartender disagrees. Detweiler asks for another beer then goes and makes a phone call.

The call is for the man in blue, whose name is Cliff. It turns out that Becky is his estranged wife on a trial separation and he’s very incensed when Detweiler tells him that she just picked up some guy at the bar and they’re going back to her place. As he leaves the apartment he announces that he’s going to “kill that broad.”

The scene fades to an establishing shot of a courthouse, then we go to the interior where a judge is charging a jury. Apparently, Reynolds is charged with the murder of Cliff Reynolds, while his defense is that he killed Reynolds in self defense. It’s a TV charging of the jury, containing information that the audience needs but making no reference to the law that the jury must consider, nor any instructions on how to consider testimony, etc.

As the judge is speaking, the camera slowly pans over the jury. Then we find out why.

Somehow Jessica is already the foreman of the jury, despite deliberations not having started yet. (That’s not impossible, since the jury could have decided on who their foreman was at any time when they were together outside of the courtroom, but I don’t see how the judge would have known that since judges are careful to not talk to the jury about the case except inside the courtroom and on the record.) The judge then sends them out to deliberations.

There is some initial discussion, wherein several people firmly express the opinion that it’s an open-and-shut case and they’ll be done with their deliberations very soon. Jessica then takes charge of the discussion since she’s the foreman—which, as far as I can tell, is just a TV thing. Perhaps it’s different on criminal juries, but our instructions were that the foreman’s only role was to write any questions we had for the judge (they had to be submitted in writing) and to read the verdict. Turning the foreman into an authority figure makes the scene more tense, or at least makes it easier for Jessica to take charge, but this seems to be purely a dramatic thing.

One of the jurors suggests that everyone is in agreement so they should just take a vote immediately. Jessica replies, “Don’t you think that we should examine the evidence first?”

This makes a ton of sense from the perspective of a TV show which skipped to the jury room and needs to tell the story in flashbacks. In real life it would be very reasonable for any of the jurors to reply that they already examined the evidence during the trial, as it was being presented. Important evidence does not go by in a flash during a trial. Trials are slow and methodical even when there is no repetition. If the lawyers involved are even slightly competent, any important evidence will be repeated and there’s plenty of time to examine the evidence presented during the trial itself, plus plenty of time to think about it after one goes home for the day. I found it hard to think about anything else when I went home, and that was just a civil trial over breech of contract.

That’s not to say that deliberation is pointless. On the contrary, thinking things through with other people can be highly profitable. My issue, here, is that Jessica says what she did as if no one at the table knows what the evidence is. That’s absurd. There were more realistic ways to try to get the flashbacks started.

Anyway, another juror declares that the evidence shows that Mark is innocent, and this begins some general discussion. One juror declares that the only thing that Reynolds is guilty of is picking the wrong time to go bed with another man’s wife. At this point another juror objects that this is putting too little weight on the fact that Mark was in bed with another man’s wife—and killed that man when he walked in.

They end this commotion by taking a vote. They do this anonymously, with folded pieces of paper. I’m not sure why they do this; presumably because it’s more dramatic. In real life, since the next step is for people to try to persuade each other of their point of view, it’s very helpful to know who you’re talking to and of whom you’re asking questions. It is the duty of a jury to try to reach a verdict so it’s not like staying out of the fray is a responsible option. And once you start arguing for a conclusion, everyone will know how you voted anyway.

The vote is nine in favor of not-guilty, two in favor of guilty, and one undecided.

Jessica suggests that they start reviewing the evidence now that they know where they stand. Finally, the flashbacks can begin.

They start with a flashback to some testimony about how Mark Reynolds felt and why he went to the bar. He felt guilty and wanted to die and went to the bar to get drunk and drown out reality. On cross-examination, the DA asks him why he went to that particular bar, since there were six closer to the hospital. He asks if it was to meet Becky Anderson.

Several jurors discount this for some reason which is not clear to me, then they move on to recalling Mark’s later testimony. He and Becky went back to Becky’s place, then as they were naked in bed together they heard a noise. Mark got up and put his pants on, then Becky’s husband barged through the door holding a gun. Mark fought him for it.

They struggled into the next room and over to the fireplace. In the struggle the gun went off, then Mark picked up a poker from the fireplace and hit Cliff on the head with it, hard. Then Becky called the police and they came and picked Mark up. He used his phone call, not to call a lawyer, but to call the hospital, where they told him that his wife had died without regaining consciousness.

We come back from the flashback to some fighting among the jury. One of the jurors is utterly convinced that Mark Reynolds is guilty as sin and lying, though he only knows it by his gut. He says that they can stay there until Christmas if everyone wants, but he will never change his mind. (They go to commercial break on this statement.) I wish I could say that this part sounds like dramatic exaggeration but something similar happened on the jury on which I served. It didn’t have as much impact because the jury in a civil trial in Pennsylvania only requires ten jurors to agree in order to reach a verdict, but I can say from experience it is possible to have people who are convinced of a conclusion and will neither listen to persuasion nor attempt to persuade others, and their inability to even begin to try to convince others (possibly due to a lack of relevant social skills) can make them angry. I could easily see how the heightened tension of a murder trial could make them even more angry.

Anyway, after a bunch of angry shouting, Jessica talks them into reviewing more evidence.

They go to a flashback of Becky Anderson’s testimony. Becky says that not only was she separated from her late husband, but she had a restraining order against him. This is a bit remarkable since a restraining order generally requires evidence of physical danger to get. Further, the DA presses her on the reason for the divorce. She says that it was irreconcilable differences but the DA then asks if Cliff counter-sued for divorce on the grounds of infidelity. All of this is dramatic, but at the same time hard to square with Cliff having believed that they were only on a trial separation. I don’t see how one can counter-sue for divorce on the grounds of infidelity and expect that you’ll remain married and get back together in a few months. The existence of a restraining order is also hard to square with a “trial separation.” There’s then some pointless questioning about how many men she’s picked up from bars. The defense objects and the judge sustains it, admonishing the DA. The odd thing about this is that the only point which makes sense for the DA to make is that she never picks up men, making his theory that she and Mark already knew each other more likely. It’s played as if he was trying to paint her as a slut, but that’s the opposite of what he would want to do.

Back in the jury room they fight a bit more. Someone refers to Mark as rich and used to having his own way and another juror objects that it was the wife who was rich, not Mark. After some bickering and insults, they go to a flashback of the testimony of a Mr. Fenton Harris (played by Alan Hale Jr. who is probably best known for playing the Skipper on Gilligan’s Island).

Incidentally, while this part of my experience is not something to generalize from, while some jurors did express offense, none of us ever insulted any of the other jurors. The one juror who picked her words badly and gave offense made a point, after she realized it, of being more careful. This is only practical; in order to get out of deliberations and in order to get a verdict which one thinks is just, one needs to persuade the people to whom one is speaking. Open insults are too obviously a way to spend a long time then return no verdict, making the whole thing a colossal waste of time. It’s one thing to give up a lot of time and inconvenience one’s family and co-workers to help justice be done. It’s another thing to do it for no benefit to anyone. That said, after we decided on a verdict and were waiting around to return it some people compared this experience of jury duty to other times that they’d served and one told of a time she was on a criminal trial where some of the jurors were openly accusing other of the jurors of being racists. (They did not return a verdict and it was declared a mistrial.)

Mr. Fenton runs a motel called the Bide-A-Wee. It’s located about fifteen miles out of town, on Route 37. In his business it’s a good practice never to recognize the customers, but he does recognize Mark. He came to the hotel somewhere between four to six times. He thinks he saw Becky once with Mr. Reynolds, but she didn’t come into the office; she stayed outside in the car.

This generated a ton of talking in the courtroom and the judge had to bang his gavel, calling for order in the court. (I don’t know if the judge in our trial even had a gavel; he certainly never banged it nor did anyone lack the self control talk audibly about what a witness just said.)

The DA concluded by asking about the timing, which put it about three months before Mark Reynolds and Becky Anderson claim to have met for the first time.

We then come back to the jury room, where they discuss the fact that Mr. Fenton only thinks that he saw her but isn’t sure. I’m not sure why no one brings up how difficult it would be, from inside an office, to recognize someone sitting in a car. For one thing, this would require the office to have a clear view of where Mark parked. This would be entirely under Mark’s control (assuming he was driving), which would mean that Mark was unbelievably careless while trying to be discrete. Even apart from that, seeing someone you don’t know, inside a car, well enough to be able to recognize them months later, in a different context—that’s really hard to do even under favorable circumstances.

Anyway, they argue and bicker for a while.

Eventually Jessica points out that if Becky and Mark knew each other beforehand, that their pretending to meet at a bar where Becky was a regular and where many of Cliff’s friends were known to hang out meant that they meant to be seen and to attract Cliff’s attention.

They then flash back to the testimony of the guy Cliff was living with (they were fishing buddies). When questioned, he said that Cliff had no gun when he left to confront Becky.

Jessica says that this is puzzle piece number one: where did Cliff get the gun? It was midnight when he got the call. He couldn’t have bought it.

With the help of some flashbacks to the testimony of a ballistics expert as well as just general recall, Jessica establishes that the gun had the fingerprints of both Mark and Cliff on it but no other fingerprints, that a nitrate test showed that both men had held the gun when it was fired, that only one shot was fired, and that a matching bullet had been taken out of the wall.

After some more bickering and insults (which, frankly, are beginning to feel like an attempt to pad out the episode), they then proceed to consider the testimony of Becky Anderson’s neighbor.

When he came home Cliff’s car was in the way and he had to park in the street. He didn’t say anything because Cliff Anderson had a volatile temper; it was a good thing that Mark Reynolds grabbed that poker because if he hadn’t, when he looked through the window a few hours later it would have been Mark’s body taken out on a stretcher, not Cliff’s.

No one remarks on the several hours between when the guy tried to park and when he was looking through the window and seeing Cliff’s body being removed. Instead, we just get some remarks on how reliable it was to get Cliff to show up angry, then a flashback of the DA’s closing argument where he gives his theory of what happened. The two were not in bed, they were waiting for Cliff. Cliff came in, then as he went to talk to his wife, Mark killed him in cold blood. Mark had the gun, not Cliff, and used it after Cliff was dead to create a claim of self defense.

We come back to the jury room and as people are starting to agree that it was murder, Jessica says that the one thing that she’s willing to believe is that Cliff did bring the gun himself. She reminds them about the testimony of a traffic officer from a year ago who stopped Cliff and confiscated a gun in his glove box. Jessica says that a man like Cliff would almost certainly have gotten another gun soon after. Jessica doesn’t explain why she’s only just thought of that now when she listed it as a puzzle piece only a few minutes before.

After some more bickering and insults, which have crossed the point of being tiresome, Jessica points out that they’ve been overlooking something. According to the paramedics, Mark had broken his collarbone in the accident. How, then, was he able to successfully struggle with Cliff for the gun? The paramedics testified that his left arm was practically useless, yet the powder traces were on his left hand.

They then go back to a bunch of angry bickering.

Then Jessica says that one of the people made a good point, that it seems a bit ludicrous that these two people with Mark’s wife lying critically ill in a hospital bed chose this particular night to lure Becky’s husband to his death.

They then go back to a bunch of angry bickering.

Jessica then says that there is a third possibility between Mark murdering Cliff and Mark killing him in self defense, which none of them have yet considered. Instead of stating it, she brings up the time discrepancy between Mark and Becky’s timeline and what the neighbor said. She then says that this leads to only one inescapable conclusion, and only one possible verdict.

We then go to the court, where the jury returns the verdict of Not Guilty.

They get the basic procedural stuff wrong, I think just because they want to skip it for the sake of brevity.

Jessica then approaches the DA, who says that he guesses he might as well not bother going after Becky Anderson. Jessica says that it’s more important now than ever and asks if they can meet in his office in thirty minutes. She then asks him to have Becky and her lawyer present. He asks what this is about and Jessica explains off-camera.

The next scene is thirty minutes later, in the DA’s office. Jessica is late for some reason which is never explained and doesn’t add anything. They might really have wanted to pad this episode out, which is the opposite of most episodes of Murder, She Wrote where they don’t have the time to fit everything in.

The DA’s office has a curious layout, with his desk in an anteroom to the conference table (I think that this is just a standard Murder, She Wrote set that they repurposed to be the DA’s office). Anyway, over a fairly protracted discussion with a lot of interruptions by Becky and her lawyer, Jessica explains what really happened. For brevity I’m going to present it together with bits that Becky added toward the end:

Mark and Becky were lovers but Mark’s wife of less than a year had all the money. Mark wanted both, so he tried to murder his wife, who never wore a seatbelt, by slamming their car into a telephone pole, passenger-side first.  This is what she meant by asking him “Why?”—she was asking him why he tried to kill her. Later, at the hospital, when he heard that she might regain consciousness (and incriminate him), he panicked and called the one person whose help he could rely on—Becky. They arranged to meet at the bar then for her to take him home so she—a supposed stranger—could give him an alibi for when he had to go back to the hospital and finish his wife off.

Unfortunately for them, Cliff found out and came to Becky’s apartment demanding to know where the man was. When he finally believed that no one was there, he demanded to know who the man was. Cliff became abusive and threatened to find the man and kill him, and then to kill her. As part of this, he threw Becky to the ground she picked up the poker and struck him in self defense. Half an hour later Mark came back from finishing his wife off in the hospital by smothering her with a pillow. He told Becky that, in his wife’s weakened condition, she died almost instantly. Their problem now was that they couldn’t let anyone know that Cliff had found Becky alone so they came up with the idea that Mark had been the one to kill Cliff in self defense. In fact, this was an even stronger alibi than just spending time with her.

Becky admits everything and takes a plea deal from the DA because he really wants Mark.

After this, in some building which I assume is meant to be the same building as both the courthouse and where the DA’s office is, Mark runs into Jessica and thanks her for her verdict. She says that there’s no need—the satisfaction is knowing that the right thing has been done. Mark then says that he’ll always remember her. Jessica replies, “Oh yes, I’m quite sure you will.”

He makes it about ten steps towards the exit when two police officers arrest him. He looks over his shoulder at Jessica.

She looks at him.

Then she turns and begins to walk away and we go to credits.

This was an interesting episode, and not just because I got the chance to compare it with my recent service on a jury. As Murder, She Wrote goes, it’s more of a pure puzzle than many of the episodes are. As a puzzle, it’s well constructed. The story is set up in such a way that we’re operating within a framing that the murderer chose, though with some additional clues that came about despite the murderer’s efforts. Within the framing the murderer provided, the story together with the facts the murderer tried to exclude don’t really make sense. That’s an excellent setup for a murder mystery.

My biggest complaint about this episode is the incessant bickering. It got so bad that they even gave one of the characters the role of the audience in telling one of the worst offenders to shut up. To some degree this is an artifact of the medium; television needed to be maximally compelling at all times out of the constant fear that viewers would change the channel. One way writers tried to cope with this was to create as much conflict as possible, since conflict tends to demand the attention of people who see it and makes us want to see if it’s resolved. It’s a cheap trick and hurt the episode, but the temptation to it was, perhaps, understandable. It’s a good lesson, I think, in how the accidents that can give rise to good things can also impose limitations on them.

A much smaller complaint is that the episode didn’t entirely take its premise of being about jury room deliberations seriously. This is always forgivable in little things for practical reasons, such as the judge’s instructions being for the audience, not the jury. A skilled writer could have done a better job making it for both, but forgiveness is a highly practical virtue in a fallen world, and this is a very minor thing, more or less on the level of how characters don’t need to use the bathroom on television. Less minor is that the jury tended to act like they hadn’t heard a piece evidence until a flashback of it happened. This was practical, but false to how juries actually work. Unless jurors are shirking their duty, they are actively listening to testimony and trying to fit it in and make sense of it as they hear it. This is part of why each side in the case has an opening statement—in their opening statement they explain the framing of the evidence that they propose so that jurors can do this kind of analysis. The jurors in this case, except for Jessica, had conclusions, but no independent thoughts.

Well, that’s not quite true. A Mr Lord made the point that picking the night of Mark’s car accident which killed his wife to lure Cliff Anderson to his death would have been a crazy plan. He didn’t explain, but he was right that it was too filled with contingencies that had to happen correctly for Cliff Anderson to die at all, and if they didn’t work out, the couple would have then been in a terrible position to try to kill Cliff again.

Other than that, I can’t think of an example of a juror having an independent thought from Jessica. Which is a pity, because Jessica navigating actual thoughts instead of meaningless ranting and insults would have been more interesting.

All that said, the presentation of the case was quite interesting. We get about six minutes of the case as it happens, which throws a lot at us, then we move to a retrospective examination in the jury/court room. This change of perspective is, on its own, an interesting setup. There’s less to keep track of and it presents itself as more of a challenge to try to remember it. The flashbacks which follow, and present further evidence, are also very clearly delineated as evidence being presented. In a normal Murder, She Wrote episode, while clues are given, they are disguised as being part of the action which is there to move the plot forward (while red herrings tend to be held out as obvious evidence). In a normal episode it’s easy to sit back and watch the action, as it were. Here, our attention is focused.

I also like how the episode misdirects us on the question of who the principle murderer is and who the accomplice is. With the initial setup, if Mark and Becky had actually planned to kill Becky’s husband, she would be the murderer and Mark the accomplice. The reversal to Mark being the principal murderer and Becky the accomplice, and for a different death, was an extremely well-done bit of misdirection.

I’m not sure whether a jury-room setting could be made to work for a novel. As I’ve mentioned, TV is really, structurally, a short story. I think a jury-room short story would be very doable. It would be difficult to actually get a detective on to a jury for a murder trial—previous experience that might bias you is a for-cause strike and both sides have an unlimited number of for-cause strikes. Still, it could be fun. I think that the main thing to take from this episode in terms of story construction—since very few people are writing short stories these days—is the interesting structure of the framing provided by the murderer vs. the correct framing, especially with regard to a putative victim and a real victim and a putative principal murder vs. the real principal murderer.

Just as a side note, I found it amusing that two of the witnesses had Maine accents (Mr. Fenton and the next-door neighbor) while the rest had standard Californian accents. That’s typical of Murder, She Wrote episodes set near Cabot Cove. So few people try for Maine accents that it sounds a bit weird when someone actually does one. It makes me wonder how the few guest actors who did Maine accents ended up doing them.

Oh, one final thought on the episode: a big part of the mystery and twists and turns of the case was done by how the episode directed our attention throughout.  We saw Mark when his shoulder was injured but then we saw him months later, healed up, before we saw the flashback in which we saw the actor (with a perfectly good shoulder) wrestling for the gun. This made it a lot easier to forget this crucial piece of evidence and for it to be a revelation when Jessica reminds us of it. It’s a good lesson in the importance of being careful to direct the audience’s attention away from the important things so they will feel fooled when the detective reveals the solution.

A second final thought on the episode: while most episodes feel rushed, this episode actually took its time, which I think also helped. It took its time so much it may have run into the opposite problem of a normal episode, and actually included things for padding. Towards the end the bickering felt really pointless. That said, the bickering was annoying but not too hard to ignore, and I really appreciated the less rushed pace. It could have been used better, but it gave characters more time for characterization, making the episode feel a bit richer, I think.

It’s been a few years since I reviewed the Murder, She Wrote episode Murder In a Minor Key. I recently re-watched that episode and re-read my review and while I don’t take back a single thing I said in the review, I do think that I missed something, because in spite of all of the cheesiness and the plot holes, there is something captivating about that episode.

On reflection, I think that for all of its foibles (such as a tuning fork being used as a murder weapon) and plot holes (a woman carrying on an affair and saying that her lover wasn’t involved because her husband was “her problem” killing her husband in a moment of frustration because he neglected her), it did capture the sense of excitement and adventure that golden age mysteries had.

The first element of this is that it had a sense of something unusual breaking into the ordinary. This is often missing from Murder, She Wrote episodes because there are, generally, long-standing hatreds and rivalries established early on. Here, we have an apparently placid environment which suddenly breaks down. That’s much more of a golden-age feel, and also produces much more of a sense of mystery. “Which of the people who hated the victim finally got him?” is a fine question, but it’s not nearly so much a golden-age question.

Another major element of the golden-age mystery is the helplessness of the police, to the point of them barely investigating. This can be taken almost to the point of being silly, and this was remarked upon even during the Golden Age. Consider the opening of G.K. Chesterton’s short story The Mirror of the Magistrate, first published in 1925:

JAMES BAGSHAW and Wilfred Underhill were old friends, and were fond of rambling through the streets at night, talking interminably as they turned corner after corner in the silent and seemingly lifeless labyrinth of the large suburb in which they lived. The former, a big, dark, good-humoured man with a strip of black moustache, was a professional police detective; the latter, a sharp-faced, sensitive-looking gentleman with light hair, was an amateur interested in detection. It will come as a shock to the readers of the best scientific romance to learn that it was the policeman who was talking and the amateur who was listening, even with a certain respect.

“Ours is the only trade,” said Bagshaw, “in which the professional is always supposed to be wrong. After all, people don’t write stories in which hairdressers can’t cut hair and have to be helped by a customer; or in which a cabman can’t drive a cab until his fare explains to him the philosophy of cab-driving. For all that, I’d never deny that we often tend to get into a rut: or, in other words, have the disadvantages of going by a rule. Where the romancers are wrong is, that they don’t allow us even the advantages of going by a rule.”

“Surely,” said Underhill, “Sherlock Holmes would say that he went by a logical rule.”

“He may be right,” answered the other; “but I mean a collective rule. It’s like the staff work of an army. We pool our information.”

“And you don’t think detective stories allow for that?” asked his friend.

“Well, let’s take any imaginary case of Sherlock Holmes, and Lestrade, the official detective. Sherlock Holmes, let us say, can guess that a total stranger crossing the street is a foreigner, merely because he seems to look for the traffic to go to the right instead of the left. I’m quite ready to admit Holmes might guess that. I’m quite sure Lestrade wouldn’t guess anything of the kind. But what they leave out is the fact that the policeman, who couldn’t guess, might very probably know. Lestrade might know the man was a foreigner merely because his department has to keep an eye on all foreigners; some would say on all natives, too. As a policeman I’m glad the police know so much; for every man wants to do his own job well. But as a citizen, I sometimes wonder whether they don’t know too much.”

This would be taken into account in later detective stories; it became common for the amateur to work with the police and leave to the police the things that the police are good at, such as knocking on every door for three blocks and asking everyone if they saw something until they find someone who did, or asking every hardware store within a hundred miles if they recently sold a large crescent wrench to someone who did not look like a plumber. Indeed, Poirot would come to say that it is for the police to assemble the facts and for Poirot to figure out what they mean. This is eminently reasonable and in some sense an improvement in the genre, but that development did trade something for what it gained: anyone might go and investigate for himself; the police will only cooperate with a select few.

Murder in a Minor Key had that feeling of the main characters doing something that anyone could do. Chad and Jenny were just college students who happened to be friends with the composer who was accused of the crime. They had no official connections with anyone, no credentials, and until the end, no cooperation from anyone. (How they got cooperation for the re-enactment is not explained because I don’t think it could possibly have been justified. The police detective who is present says that he’s only there because the school asked him to cooperate, but why on earth did the school ask him to cooperate?)

This sort of setup is very hard to do well, but it is also very exciting, and that can make up for a lot.

On the twenty third day of October in the year of our Lord 1988, the fifth season of Murder, She Wrote opened with the episode J.B. As In Jailbird. (Last season ended with The Body Politic.)

The episode begins with Michael Hagarty (an MI6 agent) walking through the shadows in a dingy apartment building. He cocks his revolver, then knocks on a door and claims to be the maintenance man, here to fix a bad pipe. A sweaty man (“the Bulgarian”) sitting on the bed tells him to come back later.

There’s a bit of arguing and he tries a passphrase on Michael.

It may snow in the Sierras before the weekend.

This is proper spy stuff. Unfortunately, Michael doesn’t know the countersign, so he just keeps up with the maintenance man act. The sweaty man exits out the window as Michael kicks the door open. The man fires some bullets at the door, then goes down the fire escape. Just outside the fire escape is Jessica getting out of a car.

He man demands the keys from Jessica, but she doesn’t have the keys. When he threatens to kill her if she doesn’t give him the keys, Michael shoots him dead.

Moments later, as James Bond-inspired music plays, a police car drives up. Michael, hearing the sirens, runs away. The cops see Jessica standing over the corpse and arrest her.

The camera moves over to a front business where a British man named Lancaster berates Michael.

It turns out, though, that it wasn’t Michael who shot the sweaty man, it was “The Cobra”. No one knows who he is, and even this time Michael never saw him. His theory is that The Cobra doesn’t like loose ends, and the sweaty man was a loose end, so The Cobra tied him up when he panicked.

The subject then turns to Jessica. Michael ran into her at the airport and thought that she would be good cover for him leaving the airport, so he offered her a ride to his hotel. When Lancaster called him on his car-phone and told him about the meeting, he had no choice but to leave her in the car while he went in to try to fix the Bulgarian’s plumbing. Lancaster is worried that Jessica will talk to the press but Michael says that he’s taken care of that, temporarily.

The scene then goes to the police station where Jessica is waiting to be processed. Jessica talks to a Sergeant, who asks her who she really is. The real Jessica Fletcher reported her purse and luggage stolen at the airport. They book Jessica as “Jane Doe”. Jessica says that her nephew, Grady, will vouch for her.

The scene then goes back to the place with Lancaster and Michael. They are reviewing the case “from a damage control perspective.” In two days, Leonard Matoso will give a speech at Berkeley.

He’s an opponent of his African nation’s government, but he’s too popular for them to assassinate him at home. For some reason that isn’t specified, they can do it in America, however, “with clean hands”. I guess in America any number of people might want to kill him, whereas at home only the government would? Seems a bit backwards, but I’m not a spy. Anyway, this is why there are Bulgarians in this episode—to provide the hitman. Michael suggests that Matoso’s own people might be the ones who have hired the Bulgarians, in order to be the match which sets off the powder keg back home.

Be that as it may, the word from the Bulgarian embassy is that Cobra has accepted the contract. The Americans doubt the British information, and their official position is that their security is adequate for Matoso to come give his speech ad Berkley.

There’s another British agent in the room who’s somehow involved, though it’s not at all clear how. His name is Roger Travis.

He and Michael don’t get along. He implies that Michael killed the Bulgarian contact, while Michael says something about how he (the other agent) was supposed to be guarding someone that The Cobra killed, vaguely implying (I think) that maybe this agent is actually the Cobra. Michael ends up grabbing Roger by the lapels, and Lancaster threatens them both with disciplinary action to calm things down.

The scene shifts to the police station where Grady comes in to identify Jessica, but says that he’s never seen her before in his life. We fade to black and go to commercial break.

We come back to Jessica begging Grady to identify her, and he overdoes it on the denials. After he leaves, he talks with the Sergeant, who explains that she “iced a commie agent” and they have her figured for being an enemy agent.

The Sergeant, whose name is Nash, goes back to his office, where he meets another Sergeant, Joe Santiago, from the Miami PD. He’s here to extradite someone. While he was waiting in the office, he was looking over the file about the Bulgarian. It reminded him of another case that was like this, with a Greek national iced in an alleyway and a woman who looked a bit like their Jane Doe spotted at the scene. He asks to speak to her and Nash says that’s fine.

The scene shifts to Michael and Grady walking along a street and Michael asks how it went. Grady is upset and Michael explains that it’s for Jessica’s protection. He tells Grady a bit about how there’s an assassination attempt in the works and tells Grady to go home and call him if anyone comes nosing around about Jessica.

The scene shifts back to police headquarters where the two Sergeants are interrogating Jessica. Eventually she demands to call her lawyer. They inform her that her lawyer is here now and she can talk to him. Her lawyer is, of course, Michael Hagarty, under cover as a southern lawyer Derek Dawson. I wonder if he showed up and said, “Hi, I’m Jane Doe’s lawyer. We put tracking devices on all of our clients, which is why I’m here without having been called” and instead of blinking an eye they put him in a conference room and asked him if he wouldn’t mind waiting for a few minutes while they interrogate his client without him present.

Anyway, they’re talking, and after a bit Michael drops the act and fills Jessica in on the Cobra.

When Grady goes back to his apartment a strange looking woman is knocking on his door.

Her name is Glenda Morrison, she’s a reporter from “The Chronicle”. She had an appointment to do an interview with Jessica. When Grady indicates some recognition, she says that he might have heard of her from a series she did on the Afghanistan war, or the assassination of a Nicaraguan general. Glenda leaves her number asking for Jessica to call her immediately.

Back at the British spy warehouse, Lancaster and Michael are talking about Cobra. Michael says that the Cobra is too good, like he’s working with inside information. Lancaster mentions that The Cobra made a fool of him before in Kenya. The Cobra managed to blow up a bus full of police. Lancaster wonders whether that was the reason he was exiled to California. He intends to retire in three months, though, and the Cobra will be somebody else’s problem.

They’re doing a good job of spreading around suspicion of who The Cobra is, I’ll give them that. So far it could be any of Joe Santiago, Glenda Morrison, Lancaster, or Roger Travis.

Lancaster then gives Michael a message that Roger took from Grady. Michael goes off to get lunch.

Roger Travis then walks in and talks to Lancaster, saying that his source at the Bulgarian embassy said that the sweaty man definitely took the payment with him. Yet no money was found on the body. Travis says that this is a troubling contradiction if one believes Michael’s version of events. Lancaster warns Travis not to make accusations without hard evidence. They then discuss Jessica, but don’t really say anything of substance.

Michael meets Grady. Grady tells him about Glenda Morrison. Michael is dismissive at first, but then Grady says that he phoned the chronicle and they’ve never even heard of a Glenda Morrison. Michael asks to see the phone number she gave him. While Grady is fishing it out of his pocket, a car pulls up, a tinted window lowers, and a gun with a silencer sticks out of the slit at the top.

Michael notices the gun, grabs Grady, and dives to the ground. The gun fires but doesn’t hit anything and the car speeds away. We see that Grady and Michael are fine, then fade to black and we’re off to commercial.

So far, they’ve done a pretty good job with the spy thriller elements. Suspicion is everywhere and the tension is high.

When we get back we’re at the police station. Kevin Styles, special attorney with the State Department shows up and introduces himself to Lt. Nash. He’s there unofficially, and is asking about the situation. He says that they’ve told the Bulgarians that it was a non-political robbery gone bad. He’s also certain that he’s seen Joe Santiago before. He wonders if it was in Paris last year. Joe says that he was in Paris last year on some liaison work with Interpol, but he didn’t attend any parties, and he says that if they’d met, he’d have remembered. Styles asks Lt. Nash to get him a copy of the file, and not to tell anything to the press without running it by him, first.

Back in the jail cell, Jessica is examining the book she had been holding when she was arrested—she asked if she could have it back and Sergeant Nash was indulgent. She finds a postcard in it.

She’s interrupted in her investigations by Roger Travis, who’s dressed as a uniformed policeman. He talks to Jessica, identifies himself as British counter-intelligence, and asks her to testify against Michael, but she protests that she wasn’t working with him and didn’t see him do anything. Travis tells her that she’ll never see a penny of the half million dollars, but she has no idea what half million dollars he’s talking about. She threatens to call Sgt. Nash to talk this over with him and Travis sneaks away.

The next scene is back at the hotel where Jessica is supposed to be. Glenda Morrison comes to the door, knocks, calls out Mrs. Fletcher’s name, and enters. Michael then tackles her and pins her to the couch. She admits that she exaggerated her resume and she’s just a freelance reporter who was hoping to score an interview with Jessica Fletcher which she hoped to sell to Rolling Stone, but people usually aren’t interested in talking to freelance reporters writing on spec.

Back at the station, Jessica meets with Michael (posing as her lawyer) again, where she tells him about Roger Travis’ visit. There’s some speculation, but the big piece of info is that the money would not have been passed as cash, that would be too bulky. It would have been something like a claim ticket or a swiss bank account number.

Back in her cell, Jessica looks at the post card again, this time taking a close look at the stamp.

At Jessica’s hotel, Glenda Morrison is hanging out in the lobby and Grady is watching her. Lt. Joe Santiago comes in and asks the desk clerk for Jessica’s room. Glenda casually walks up to hear the conversation. He flips his badge and tells the clerk that Mrs. Fletcher reported a robbery at the airport.

Glenda follows him. Grady follows her. Music that’s as close to James Bond music without legally infringing on its copyright plays.

Joe looks around in the room like he’s trying to find something hidden, then notices Glenda and Grady. He pulls out his gun and demands to know who they are. We fade to black and go to commercial.

When we get back there’s a bunch of prevarication but not much that’s interesting, then Joe leaves. Glenda stays and there is some comedic bickering, as well as a scene where Donna (Grady’s wife) calls and hears the voice of another woman in Grady’s room, but of course there’s no chance to explain because Glenda tries to steal the phone to talk (she thinks to Mrs. Fletcher) and accidentally unplugs it. I suppose now that she’s comic relief, we can scratch her off the suspect list.

The next scene is back in Jessica’s jail cell. For some reason Kevin Styles is talking with Jessica.

She explains that she knows a lot of influential people in Washington and needs his help to get out of jail. She points out that if he goes to any bookstore he’ll see her face on the dust cover jacket. He says that he’ll do just that. He asks if there’s anything he can do for her in the meantime, if she wants fruit or anything to read, then notices that she has a book. He proclaims that he, too, is a Zane Grey fan, though he hasn’t read this one.

He examines it very closely with his back to Jessica for some reason, then hands it back to her when Sgt. Nash and a police woman come to the cell door. Styles says that he’ll be in touch and leaves.

The woman in the cell next to Jessica is about to go for her court appearance, so Jessica asks her to make a phone call to Grady. “You might even say it’s a matter of life and death.”

The next scene is back at the spy office, where Lancaster is feeding fish.

Travis explains to Lancaster that he saw Jessica in the police station and it confirms his theory that Michael Hagarty is dirty. Lancaster points out that the interview, based on Travis’ description, provides exactly no support for this theory, but sighs and says that they should get this out in the open. He asks Travis to summon Hagarty, but he’s nowhere to be found.

We then go back to Jessica’s cell, where Kevin Styles returns. His manner is entirely changed. He says that he’s really rather pressed for time and wants the stamp. He pulls a knife out and tells her to give it to him. He adds that “we have your nephew” and if he doesn’t walk out of the cell now, and with the stamp, Grady will die. Jessica says that he’s very persuasive and that it’s in the toe of her shoe. She kicks it off and it lands across the cell.

He picks it up and as he stands up, Michael Hagarty disguised as the woman who used to be in the cell next to Jessica’s reaches through the bars and grabs Styles around the neck, points a gun at his head, and tells him to relax or the next sound he’ll hear is a .38 soft nose crashing through his brain pan.

In the next scene Jessica is being released, and Nash apologizes for the mixup. Jessica is very understanding and tells him that it wasn’t all his fault. Nash asks how she knew that the stamp was the payoff to the hitman. Jessica explains that she didn’t notice it at first but then it struck her that the cancellation marks didn’t run across the stamp, but rather the stamp was on top of the marks. (For those who have never sent a letter, the post office marks stamps that are used to prevent their re-use. The mark not appearing on top of the stamp showed that the stamp was never used to pay for the post-card being used.) So she took off the stamp and replaced it with another one. When Styles came to see Jessica, he was very interested in the book, and after he left, the postcard was missing.

Michael comes up and tells Jessica that all’s well that ends well, to which Jessica enthusiastically agrees. Michael then says that she’ll be at the airport in plenty of time for her flight, and Jessica says that she hates to put Michael to all this trouble. He replies that it’s no trouble at all, but he did promise his chief that he’d pick up some microfilm from an agent in Chinatown, it will only take a minute, and it’s on their way. Jessica then tells Grady to call a cab, and we go to credits.

Well. That was a weird episode to begin the season with. It was, at least, better done than the last episode that tried to be a spy-thriller (Murder Through the Looking Glass). Like a lot of spy thrillers, though, it made a lot of interesting promises and fell apart when it came time for there to be a payoff.

The person who turned out to be the Cobra barely had any screen time and only showed up after the second commercial break. None of the characters doing suspicious things had any payoff, not even a threadbare explanation for the suspicious things that they were doing. I suppose Lancaster is an exception in that (by default) he turned out to just have been embarrassed by The Cobra before and it’s a coincidence that the Cobra showed up here. I suppose that Roger Travis is another exception; we can conclude that he just groundlessly suspected Michael Hagarty because he’s overly suspicious and not concerned with evidence. But what’s the deal with Lt. Joe Santiago?

Did he really just leaf through a report that was on Lt. Nash’s desk to pass the time? Did he really think that a Greek killed in an alleyway in Miami and a Bulgarian killed in an alley in California were actually similar enough to warrant suspicion? Was there really a woman whose description by a cab driver was similar to Jessica’s? Why did he go looking for something in Jessica’s hotel room? So far as he knew it wasn’t Jessica Fletcher who was found with the body. What could he possibly have hoped to find in her hotel room? Why did Glenda Morrison wait in the lobby for Lt. Santiago when she’d never seen him before and had no idea who he was? Why did she listen in to his conversation? How on earth did a freelance reporter working on a spec article on Mrs. Fletcher for Rolling Stone Magazine get a key to Mrs. Fletcher’s room?

None of this is answered, and given the ending, it can’t be answered. It’s all fake mystery.

Not as mysterious, but still something that needs explanation: why did someone (The Cobra?) take a shot at Grady or Michael Hagarty? Which actually was it? If this was The Cobra who shot at one of them, how did he find them? If he followed Grady, how did he know how to do it? This was before Kevin Styles got a copy of the file on the case so he had no way of knowing that the woman in the alley was Jane Doe claiming to be Jessica Fletcher or where she was staying in the city. So how did he follow Grady? Or, if he followed Michael instead, how did he follow Michael? Why did he follow Michael? Why did he take a shot at either of them? How could the death of either benefit the Cobra in any way?

The setup of the episode also bears very little scrutiny. Why did the African nation hire an extremely expensive assassin to take out Leonard Matoso? Why did this involve payment being handled by Bulgarians? Why did the handling of payment by Bulgarians involve sending it through the Bulgarian embassy in America? Why was the Bulgarian embassy in America reporting its handling of funds for assassins to the British intelligence service? Bulgaria was never part of the USSR, but in 1998 it was still within the USSR’s sphere of influence and not exactly on friendly terms with Britain. Or was there supposed to be a British spy within the Bulgarian embassy in America?

For that matter, why did The Cobra shoot the Bulgarian who was supposed to pay him? The Bulgarian had no idea who he was, all he knew was a sign and countersign to recognize the guy he was supposed to deliver payment to. From his perspective, if the Bulgarian got away, he might still get payment when a new location for the handoff was decided on. If he shot the Bulgarian in the alley, it was extremely unlikely he’d ever receive payment because dead men don’t make handoffs. And how did he even know that the guy who just ran out of the fire escape was the guy who was supposed to give him the payment? They were using a recognition code to meeting at a hotel room. Was he walking up and just assumed that a guy running out of a fire escape was the guy who was supposed to give him payment, and so needed to be shot for some reason? Had he memorized the hotel layout ahead of time so he knew which fire escape window belonged to the hotel room he was meeting his payment at? And why was The Cobra there but didn’t pick up the payment? This may come down to the prop and special effects departments more than the writers, but we can see approximately where The Cobra needed to be:

Based on the angles, The Cobra actually should have been in view directly behind the Bulgarian. We can see that there was no entrance wound on the man’s upper back in this shot before he falls over:

So that rules out a shot from above. It almost rules out a shot from behind, too. But if you look at how close he was to Jessica when he was shot, it would have been very hard to shoot from behind her (behind her would be in front of the Bulgarian). Above and behind her might work, but then he’d be in full view of Michael Hagarty.

And, frankly, whether The Cobra was above and behind Jessica or even higher above Michael and the special effects department just got this wrong, neither place makes any sense for him to be when his purpose is to pick up a payment. Taking a sniper position in case a British agent shows up at the hotel door and the courier flees out of the window seems counter-productive to the goal of getting paid.

My point, in all of this, is not to nitpick. My point is that the air of mystery and intrigue which this episode relied on was formed by the hints that all of these details gave. If you got rid of these details, or changed them into other details that didn’t need an explanation, you wouldn’t have much of an episode.

The ending was also extremely strange. Jessica spent the entire episode angry at Michael for getting her into jail and keeping her there. Then, after catching The Cobra, all is immediately forgiven. So much so that Jessica says that she doesn’t want to put Michael to the trouble of driving her to the airport. Huh? Forgiving this quickly isn’t like Jessica at all. Especially since Michael never expressed contrition or even apologized.

And speaking of Michael, what the heck was the ending where Michael was dressed up as the woman in the cell next to Jessica? How did he get there? Jessica indicated surprised to Kevin Styles that he was back so soon. Given that he was just walking to a bookstore to look at the dust cover of a book by J.B. Fletcher, she could not have reasonably expected him to take long. And Jessica’s message went by way of someone going to a court hearing, to Grady, who got in touch with Michael, who came to the police station and… what? If people can just waltz into the cells, it’s not much of a protection for Jessica. Did Michael confide in Lt. Nash and get his cooperation? Would a California police station really let a British spy into their jail with a gun on his say-so?

Overall, this was not one of the better episodes, but it did have good qualities. They did a good job of pacing the hints in the first half of the episode to create a lot of intrigue. They didn’t have to have the thing completely fall apart; whichever writer pitched “instead of paying off anything we suggested in the first half of the episode, how about we introduce a new character and he’s the bad guy, and once he’s caught we pretend that nothing ever happened?” didn’t need to be listened to. Either of Roger Travis or Lancaster would have been a much better Cobra. So, for that matter, would Joe Santiago. Glenda Morrison as someone working for the Cobra would have been a big improvement, and would also explain her garish makeup as a disguise to make her hard to recognize, like a lone ranger mask. (Lone Ranger masks work shockingly well, since we have a tendency to focus on details that visually distinguish someone from everyone we could confuse them with, and an obvious detail like a lone ranger mask or garish makeup would do that, resulting in not paying attention to any other features that the person has.)

What probably would have been even better would be for several people to be “the Cobra.” It would have explained how “the Cobra” was too good. Roger Travis and Joe Santiago working together as “the cobra”, plus Glenda Morrison as a helper, would have been a vastly more satisfying ending and far more interesting. It might have even allowed Lancaster to have done something useful—say, catching Roger Travis—which would have been a cool arc for that character. Lancaster was an interesting character.

Next week we meet Dennis Stanton, one of the better characters of Murder, She Wrote, in the episode, A Little Night Work.

On the eighth day of May in the Year of our Lord 1988 the last episode of the fourth season of Murder, She Wrote aired. Called The Body Politic, it’s about an old friend of Jessica’s whose is running for the US senate in some unspecified state in the middle of America. (Last week’s episode was Deadpan.)

It begins with a black-and-white slideshow of the main not-Jessica character (Kathleen) for this episode as she is campaigning. Over this slideshow the sounds of a convention play as people are enthusiastically nominating someone. Then it fades to color and Kathleen is on a talk show debating with her opponent.

Kathleen’s opponent is Arthur Drelinger. He’s seated on the far right. The man in the middle, Edmund Hall, is the reporter who is moderating the show Face the Issues. We’ve come in at the end, and Edmund asks Kathleen about rumors in a newspaper that she’s sleeping with her campaign manager. She denies it. He then says that five years ago when she was governor that there were persistent rumors that she had an affair with a married man. Before she can substantively answer, he says that’s all the time they have. Drelinger interrupts Edmund’s goodbye with, “Thank you, Edmund. And I, for one, am certainly willing to overlook and forget any of Mrs. Lane’s past indiscretions.”

During the banter, we get a picture of a bunch of the characters for this episode.

On the left is Bud Johnson, Kathleen’s campaign manager, and the man she’s accused of sleeping with currently. Next to him is Nan Wynn, who also works for Kathleen’s campaign. To the right of Nan (our right, her left) is C.W. Butterfield, who runs Drelinger’s campaign. On the far right is Jackson Lane, Kathleen’s husband. Interestingly, James Sloyan, who plays C.W. Butterfield, previously played Lt. Spoletti in the episode Corned Beef and Carnage.

Bud excuses himself to go make some phone calls. The only one we see is to Cass Malone, who is at campaign headquarters.

She gives him the bad news that the speechwriter that they had been wining and dining has quit. Bud is disappointed, but takes it in stride. He then tells her that his wife is taking their children up to the farm for a few weeks, and invites Cass out to dinner. She tells him not to start. (Apparently, they have some kind of romantic history, but it’s long-dead and she wants it to remain that way.)

This does pretty effectively show that the rumors about Kathleen and Bud are false, though it doesn’t put Bud in a good light.

After the show, Jackson (Kathleen’s husband), Kathleen and Edmund talk. They complain about his attacking Kathleen, and Edmund tells Jackson to be glad that he’s digging up dirt on Kathleen and not him. Apparently there are various issues with back-taxes he owes, which he claims to have paid off.

In the next scene Butterfield and Nan talk to each other. There’s a bit of back-and-forth, but the gist is that he offers her a job in Drelinger’s campaign for the main race once he beats Kathleen. (Apparently, this is only the primary race.)

The next scene is Bufferfield talking with Edmund. Edmund says that The Post was fed the story on Kathleen and her campaign manager, but he’d really appreciate it if the next bit of dirty attack material was fed to him. Butterfield tells him that the Drelinger campaign would never smear an opponent, but if anything does get sent to Edmund—no promises—it would come from an anonymous source. Edmund says that he understands perfectly.

Next we get an establishing shot of a large and luxurious-looking hotel:

Jessica is talking to a desk clerk, who says that there is no reservation for her. She didn’t make it herself, so she doesn’t have a confirmation number. Kathleen shows up, warmly embraces Jessica (they’re old friends), and tries to deal with the problem, though she is embarrassed by assuming that the desk clerk would know who she is and he has no idea.

She and Jessica talk about the problems of running for the senate. Then she asks Jessica to write her speech for an upcoming event because her head speech writer just quit. Jessica declines, but Kathleen talks her into it.

Part of this talking Jessica into taking the job is that shortly before she tried to ad-lib a speech and nearly promised maternity leave to a group of veterans of foreign wars. I believe that this is supposed to make her endearing, but it has me questioning her qualifications as senator on several levels.

The scene cuts to a TV station and Edmund Hall gets a call from an anonymous source with dirt. He says that he’s interested, and we cut to a bus station where Edmund hall is waiting dressed in what I can only describe as a spy getup.

A phone call comes in on a pay phone and a muffled voice tells him to check the phone book. He does and in it there is a key. He asks who the guy is and he hangs up. The key turns out to be to a locker, in which there is a manila envelope. Hall opens it and looks at what’s inside (which is out of frame) and his jaw drops open.

In the next scene, Jessica is writing at Kathleen’s headquarters. She asks Bud how the speech is going (she shows him a copy) and they discuss it. Then Nan comes in and says that she left Kathleen at an elderly center, and she’ll be back late because she’s going to see the party chairman who asked her to come over for a meeting.

The scene then fades to Jessica in bed. Before the camera pans over, though, we get an establishing shot of a travel clock:

The time is going to be significant, of course, but it’s interesting how much these sorts of closeups were necessary because of the quality of broadcast TV at the time. If things were going well, on an expensive TV, it might look a lot like the picture above. On the other hand, if one had a cheaper TV, and if one wasn’t in a great place, if the weather wasn’t cooperating, if one’s antenna wasn’t well aligned, or if there was just electromagnetic interference, it might have looked more like this:

The camera pans over to Jessica, who’s reading a book. She then checks the time, sets it aside, and turns on the TV. There is a special broadcast by Edmund Hall. He has obtained photographs of Kathleen and Bud:

There’s a second picture, as well, which looks more incriminating:

“According to campaign sources, her husband was out of the country at the time.”

Jessica tries to call someone but gets no answer, so she leaves her room. She runs into Nan, who also saw the broadcast. She asks if Jessica has seen Bud, who is not in his room. Jessica answers that she hasn’t seen him and that Kathleen is not in her room, either.

The scene shifts to the front of the hotel, where Kathleen is getting out of a sedan as a police car pulls up. A large number of people are milling about an area with police tape around it. Kathleen sees Cass, and asks what’s happened. Cass replies, “Oh Kathleen, he must have fallen from the balcony.” Kathleen looks down and sees Bud on the ground in a bathrobe, he head in a pool of blood. We fade to black and go to commercial.

When we come back, Kathleen, Jessica, and Nan are sitting in a hotel room and Lt. Gowans is interrogating Kathleen. His opening question is whether she had any idea why he might have killed himself. His theory is that he saw the news, knew he had finished her chances of winning the nomination, and ended himself so he wouldn’t have to face that.

Kathleen protests that they were not lovers, but Lt. Gowans asks why he jumped from her balcony. When she can’t answer, he asks her if he recognizes a bracelet. It’s hers, and was found in his bathrobe. She last saw it when she took it off to shower. While she’s answer this question, Nan looks a bit surprised and concerned, like perhaps it concerned her somehow. Lt. Gowans doesn’t notice this, though, and goes on to say that every guest of the hotel is issues a bathrobe, all identical, but hers is missing.

Jackson calls and Gowan says that she can take the call in the bedroom. He’s then called over to look at some evidence in Bud’s room, so Jessica has a minute to inspect the door to the balcony, which a forensics man is busy with.

Jessica finds Lt. Gowans and points out that it’s strange that there were no fingerprints on the handle of the balcony door. Who goes out on a balcony to end it all but wipes his prints off of the door handle first?

Lt. Gowans does some more interrogation of Kathleen. She had gone out to meet the party chairman, but apparently the message got fowled up because no one was there. She waited for a bit, then drove back to town. Gowans points out that since the valet saw her arrive right after Bud’s body was discovered, and he was the only witness she had, she could easily have arrived earlier, threw him off the balcony, left, and came back. Kathleen angrily storms off to her new room.

On the way out of the room Lt. Gowans finds a piece of paper which says “A.D. 53|K.L. 46”. Jessica suggests that it’s poll information. Nan confirms this, saying that they’re preliminary figures from a poll taken this afternoon. Gowans asks if she gave them to Kathleen or Bud, and she didn’t. They were phoned over at 10pm and she brought them to Kathleen but she wasn’t back yet. She knocked and no one answered, so she slipped the note under the door. Jessica finds that odd—how did the note get onto the table?

The scene moves to Jackson and Kathleen talking. She explains that the photos were innocent. She had just beaten Bud at ping pong and he began to pout, so she consoled him. Jackson asks what the score was and she says twenty one to three. He encourages her to continue with her campaign. They go to bed, then the scene shifts to the next day where Kathleen is at a press conference. She denies any impropriety, and will continue running. A reporter asks Jackson about whether he was really there and he says that he was on a business trip in the Bahamas, but has total faith in his wife. He then adds that when she started she was twenty points behind Drelinger but now is only seven points behind. He predicts that Kathleen will win on primary day.

There are some more questions, and Edmund Hall argues with Kathleen a bit. He then asks, if she wasn’t at the hotel, if Bud had his own key to her room. At this, Jackson storms toward Hall to attack him, and it requires four or five people to hold him back. Jessica shakes her head, the scene fades to black, and we go to commercial.

When we come back, we’re at police headquarters. You can tell because the building actually has the words “Police Headquarters” engraved in stone above its entrance:

There’s something fascinating about establishing shots. Somehow a few seconds of the outside of some building and you really believe that the next scene takes place in it. Here’s the Lieutenant’s office, or at least half of it because the camera just panned over from him pulling darts out of a dart board:

As he took the darts out, he told Jessica, “Yeah, it’s murder, and yeah, I think she did it. But proving it: I’m not so sure about that.” Jessica replies, “Meanwhile, she’s being convicted on the front page of every newspaper in this state.” Both intone it as if they agree, but they don’t agree at all. It’s a pretty weird exchange.

Jessica suggests that she’s being framed to destroy her candidacy, and Gowans admits that it’s possible. Jessica tries to bully him into looking elsewhere because Kathleen is incapable of deceit or subterfuge or murder, etc. etc.

On her way back to her hotel, Jessica runs into Edmund Hall. He asks her to come on his Sunday show, and she says that she will consider it if he tells her who gave him the photos. He admits that he doesn’t know, and could hardly admit to getting them from an anonymous source in a bus station locker. She asks if it never occurred to him that it was Drelinger’s campaign and he levels with her—C.W. Bufferfield suggested he had something, but he doesn’t know if it was the photos.

Jessica then talks to Kathleen. She talked to the party chairman, who never asked for a meeting with Kathleen. The message came in through Nan. Jessica then goes off to see the Arthur Drelinger campaign.

Lt. Gowans beats her to it, though. He interrogates Drelinger and Butterfield. They were at the Onyx lodge for Drelinger to receive the man of the year award from 8pm-11pm, but Gowans heard that they left at 10:30. Butterfield clarifies that they were in his car at 11pm, went to Drelinger’s hotel room, and stayed there until midnight. Drelinger confirms this with an air of bewildered surprise, and Gowans says that if he needs anything more he’ll be back.

Gowans runs into Jessica coming on his way out. He says that her speech got to him and he decided to work on those loose ends, but he’s turned up nothing. She goes in to see Drelinger and Butterfield.

She accuses them of the taking the photos and giving them to the press, but they deny it. Then Nan Wynn walks in. She doesn’t notice Jessica and says that new poll numbers are out and Kathleen Lane is officially dead. Then she sees Jessica, the scene fades to black, and we go to our final commercial break.

When we come back, Nan and Jessica are walking in a park and talking. Nan insists that she was not a spy for Drelinger, and Jessica asks about the phone message. The man on the phone said that he was an aide to the party chairman.

Jessica then turns the subject to why Nan has left Kathleen’s campaign. It’s because Kathleen’s polling numbers have taken a nosedive. Jessica objects to polls as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and Nan replies that self-fulfilling or not, they’re taken and thus meaningful. She shows Jessica Kathleen’s polling over time. She started at 20 points behind, then moved on to 12, then 10, then 5. Jessica asks about that, and it was the day Bud died. Jessica points out that the poll numbers on the piece of paper were 7 points apart, and Nan says that that was a mistake. She then says that she told Jessica and Lt. Gowans and no one else.

This makes Jessica realize who the murderer is.

This is curious because there don’t seem to be many options. There are Drelinger and Butterfield, of course, but neither is very likely. Drelinger wasn’t a real character and Butterfield is too obvious. Plus, it’s not obvious that Butterfield had exhausted all his dirty tricks, which he’d certainly do before resorting to murder for the sake of his job. There’s Cass and Nan. Of the two I’d say that Cass would have been the most likely if Bud had fallen off of his own balcony. As it is… I’m not really seeing either of them. It could turn out to be either, as we just need a new bit of evidence to show that Bud tried to force himself on one of them, but we haven’t got it so far. It is possible that it will turn out that Kathleen did it, but that’s unlikely in the extreme. Jessica declared her incapable of murder, and Jessica is never wrong about that. There’s Edmund Hall, but that would make absolutely no sense. The only other character is Jackson Lane, Kathleen’s husband. He’s got no motive and while he’s gotten a fair amount of screen time it’s never been as much of a character. That said, he did make reference to a seven point spread which was the spread on the piece of paper that was the one solid clue found near the scene of the crime, and no one else is connected to it.

Anyway, this is surprisingly early in the episode for Jessica to figure out who did it: there are about nine minutes left. Which makes me wonder how they’re going to pad the episode out.

It turns out that about a minute and a half of that padding is Jessica self-righteously haranguing Edmund Hall about how journalists shouldn’t report on the crimes and bad actions of politicians that Jessica likes. Or possibly that journalists should stick to “the issues,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. Kathleen is in favor of spending enormous amounts of money, so perhaps that would mean pointing out that all of the things she’s in favor of would mean either unsustainable debt or huge tax increases? Jessica probably wouldn’t like that either.

I do remember in the late 1980s people expressed a great distaste for “mudslinging” in campaigning. I heard about how awful “mudslinging” was a lot during the Bush-Clinton campaigns. Admittedly, that was actually the early 1990s; 1987 was the Bush-Dukakis campaign, which I don’t remember as well. anyway, there was a great deal of complaining about this, as if big character flaws in elected representatives don’t matter when their actual policies were not that far apart, as they weren’t in the 1980s. This is especially the case in primaries where the candidates will mostly agree. In any event, this has aged very poorly.

It’s also weird that there’s so much complaining about mudslinging instead of focusing on “the issues” but literally the first words out of Kathleen’s mouth in this episode were, “If my opponent can’t find a way to pay back the $600,000 he owes from his last campaign, then how can the voters expect him to do anything about the federal budget?” That’s more of a personal attack than Dilinger’s response, “I certainly wish I had a millionaire spouse like Mrs. Lane, here. Perhaps the fairness doctrine would allow your husband to help repay my debts.” Kathleen’s opener was more of a personal attack and no more about “the issues” than Dilinger’s reply was. I suppose that this is one of those episodes in which if Jessica didn’t have double standards, she’d have no standards at all.

Jessica goes inside the house and finds Kathleen and Jackson. Kathleen says that she’s ending her campaign. She’s found out the hard way that the media has two stories; when she was twenty points behind they built her up as the underdog, when she closed the gap they started tearing her down. She just can’t take it anymore. Her attempt at public service cost her her dignity, her sanity, and nearly cost her her marriage.

She goes out to publicly announce the end of her campaign. Jessica asks Jackson if she can talk with him for a minute. She tells him that she knows who took the photos of Kathleen and Bud and leaked them to Channel 8. Partway through her explanation Gowans shows up, but doesn’t interrupt. Jessica explains that he is relieved that Kathleen withdrew, because his business dealings couldn’t stand the kind of media scrutiny involved in running for office. His slip was quoting Kathleen as having been seven points behind Drelinger when the only place that information ever existed was a mistaken memo slipped under Kathleen’s door.

This clinches it, and Jackson confesses. Bud had found out that he wasn’t really in the Bahamas. When the photos came out, Bud would start to put it together that Jackson was the one who took the photos and was trying to sink Kathleen’s campaign. Then it came to him that Bud’s suicide would finish off Kathleen’s campaign for good. So he got Kathleen out of the way, called Bud to his room, hit him on the head with a hammer, dressed Bud in Kathleen’s robe, and threw him off Kathleen’s balcony.

He summarizes his motive:

The people that I dealt with in those day— well, the people I deal with now… I didn’t get where I am by being a choir boy. And they were getting awfully nervous about those rumors. It wasn’t jail. I was looking at… much worse, and I couldn’t think of what else to do.

Gowans takes him away. Jessica steps out as Kathleen is finishing her announcement,

And now I’m going to step out of the goldfish bowl and once again become Mrs. Jackson Lane—the devoted wife of a wonderful, loving husband.

Jessica looks on and is sad, and we go to credits.

I really did not like this episode. It was an unpleasant subject that was mostly an excuse to complain about politics, and that complaining about politics took up so much time that there was approximately no characterization of any of the characters and very minimal plot.

To be fair, Jackson’s slip-up did at least appear on-screen, unlike the evidence in last week’s episode, but that’s about all that I can say for this. He doesn’t make any sense as the murderer. Even apart from it being absurd that he thought it would be all fun and games for his wife to try to get elected as a senator when he was involved in very illegal things. Just logistically, how did he have access to Kathleen’s hotel room? Her campaign is moving all over the place, it’s not like the hotel is a long-term headquarters that she’d have given him a key. Another weird issue is the casting. Eddie Albert, who played Jackson Lane, was 82 years old at the time the episode aired. Even if he was playing younger, Jackson Lane would be in his seventies, and he certainly didn’t look like he exercised as regularly as, say, Jack Lalanne. Are we really supposed to believe that he killed Bud with a hammer, changed his clothes (changing the close of someone who is not cooperating requires a surprising amount of strength, because it’s awkward) and threw his corpse over a balcony?

And then why on earth did he try to frame his wife when all he was doing was trying to make Bud’s death look like suicide? Sending her on a wild goose chase to keep her away, I get, since he needed her to not be on hand to interfere. But why dress Bud up in her bathrobe, and why throw him off of her balcony? Neither of those things were necessary to get Kathleen to lose the primary. Further, Jackson had a major interest in his beloved wife not being convicted of murder.

It is a relatively minor issue, but once again we also have no obvious way for Jessica and Kathleen to be good friends. We’re not told what state this is, but Jackson identifies it as “middle America.” Five years ago Kathleen was the mayor of her “home town” in this state. I get that Jessica and Kathleen being old friends is just a setup so that we can have this episode, but at the same time the writers could have spent a few seconds explaining how this unlikely friendship between a small-time politician in Middle America and a retired schoolteacher from Maine was formed in the early 1970s. Or between a housewife in middle America and a schoolteacher from Maine, given that Kathleen might not have been in politics at the time and Jessica probably hadn’t retired yet.

The whole episode was badly conceived. Even the opening makes no sense because it’s the sounds of someone being nominated for something, while the episode takes place before the primary has happened. People aren’t nominated to run in their primary. Worse, this episode is about politics. Politics is not merely the setting for a murder mystery, the murder mystery is an excuse for the setting. The complaining about mudslinging in politics gets undermined by the solution to the murder—it turns out that it wasn’t the Drelinger campaign playing dirty, it was Kathleen’s own husband trying to get her to quit. If he hadn’t been trying to sabotage her campaign, there wouldn’t have been all of the mudslinging.

I really wish I could say something good about this episode—that’s why I do these reviews—but I can’t think of anything. Eddie Albert gave a really good performance during his confession scene, but that’s just a credit to him as an actor. Oh well.

Thus ends the fourth season of Murder, She Wrote. Season 5 will begin with J.B. As In Jailbird.

On the first day of May in the year of our Lord 1988, the episode Deadpan aired. It was the second to last episode of the fourth season of Murder, She Wrote. (Last week’s episode was Showdown in Saskatchewan.)

We’re in New York for the opening of a play based on Jessica’s book. The play is called Mainely Murder, based on Jessica’s book Murder Comes to Maine.

We then meet our first character.

His name is Elliot Easterbrook and he’s a TV theater critic, and has an impressively negative tone. His first line is, “It has been said that the theater is a temple. If so, it is a temple which has often worshiped false gods. Only time and astute critical judgment will tell if Mainely Murder, which opens here tomorrow night, will honor the gods or, yet again, profane them.”

He goes on to interview some of the major cast members—the cast of the episode, not the cast of the play.

The first is Shayna, the producer of the play.

Elliot says that she has brought the theater such notable works as the musical biography of King Louis XVI titled Heads You Lose. He says it as if the play was terrible, but Shayna points out that it ran for 524 performances.

Jessica is also here. The Elliot remarks in his acid tones that Jessica looks just like one would picture a mystery writer from Maine to look.

Then we meet another character:

The young man is new to writing for the theater, but is the person who adapted Jessica’s book into a play. His name is Walter Knapf. Elliot asks how it was that Jessica, an experienced writer, allowed a neophyte to adapt her play. Jessica answers that Walter was a very talented student of hers. Being a protegé of Jessica’s makes it very likely that the police will suspect him for the murder that will happen this episode, if not outright arrest him for it, poor kid.

Elliot is confrontational, trying to pin Jessica down about predicting the play’s success. She says, “Isn’t it true that the only thing you can predict about the theater is that it is unpredictable?” Elliot replies, “Oh bravo, Mrs. Fletcher. You must have stayed up all night thinking that one up.” Jessica answers, “No, actually. Molière did it for me about 200 years ago.”

It’s a good zinger, but there are a few issues with it. Molière was, if you don’t know, a French playwrite and actor (I had to look it up to find out that he was also an actor). Googling, I can’t find that Molière ever said anything like this; quotes of this episode are the only things that turn up when you search for it. That’s not dispositive but what are the odds that no one has ever talked about this quote other than this episode of Murder, She Wrote? Especially since you can find pages of Molière quotes? Also, and this is a smaller thing, Molière lived from 1622 to 1673. At the time of this episode, the most recently Molière could have said this was 315 years ago. So Jessica’s zinger was made up and off by at least a century. Now the question is: was that intentional? Was Jessica meant to be better educated than Elliot and the writers used fake facts to portray that, or was she meant to be just to be a good actress who could pull off the authority to convince Elliot that he didn’t know a fake quote which he probably should have known? Both would work for their intended purpose, with the former just being a short-cut over real research to come up with a legitimate zinger. It would be interesting to know.

Anyway, the last part of this happens as we watch it on TV:

The camera pulls back to reveal two new characters. I’m going to get to them in a moment, but I find this very interesting. Why would the people who edit Elliot’s show leave this in? There’s no way that something as unimportant and likely to involve downtime that should be edited out as a pre-show interview would be broadcast live, so the presence of this exchange had to be a deliberate decision on the part of the editor. I don’t think that there’s really any way of defending it and it’s just a cute way of segwaying into introducing the new characters—a rival theater critic and his assistant. So, about them:

The theater critic—his name is Danny O’Mara—is the guy in the blue sweater vest. His assistant—Denise Quinlan—is the woman sitting in the chair. He writes a column in a newspaper (“The Chronicle”). Evidently he has a strong antipathy for Elliot. The scene began with him celebrating Jessica’s put-down (“Pow! Right in the kisser!”) and ended with him saying that everyone forgets what Elliot said by the time the woman is on to give the weather. The only reviews anyone remembers are Danny’s.

The scene shifts to a restaurant where Jessica, Walter, and someone we haven’t met before but whose name turns out to be Barney Mapost and whose job is publicist are having lunch. As they discuss how much Jessica doesn’t want to do more interviews Danny comes in and introduces himself. He professes himself to be an admirer of her work, by which he means her putting down of Elliot. When he hears that she will see a dress rehearsal of the play right after lunch, he suggests that—from what he’s heard—it would be advisable to make it a light lunch, his tone implying that the play is quite bad. He leaves, but his assistant reassures them that he’ll give them a fair shot. She then says she’ll see them tonight at the party. After she leaves, Jessica expresses surprise at inviting critics to the opening night party. Barny says that it’s Shayna’s idea, then says that they need to rush over to get to the dress rehearsal. I suppose it was a very light lunch indeed, since they never ordered.

Then we go to the dress rehearsal.

The scene of the play we come into has a farm set, and on it a witch casts a spell.

Double
Trouble,
Spoil the bubble!
Make the haystack
Turn to
Rubble!

The lights flash, and a pyrotechnic special effect at the top of the haystack fails.

It seems that Danny O’Mara heard correctly.

There is some humorous dialog where various people ask Jessica what she thinks and she tries her best to be diplomatic.

Then we skip to opening night. Walter is nervous and Jessica tries to calm his nerves. Danny O’Mara finds his seat as an announcer says that the part of the woodsman, normally played by Tony Jasper, will be played by Craig Donner. I must confess that I’ve never actually been to a broadway play (once, in middle school, I attended a school trip to a dress rehearsal of a broadway play, but I don’t think that’s the same thing). That said, do they really announce cast substitutions? (Update: a commenter has said that, based on their experience at Broadway plays it is, in fact, standard to announce cast substitutions.)

Elliot arrives late and Shayna personally ushers him into the play. He remarks to her, “I hope you don’t think by inviting me to your postprandial party you’ll color my reaction to your little play.” Shayna graciously replies, “No, but missing the first scene might,” and opens the door into the theater for him.

I wonder if the misuse of “postprandial” is intentional. “Postprandial” means “after a meal,” and usually refers to something happening right after a meal since human beings eat several times per day and so everything a person does, except in a famine, is normally not many hours after some meal. The opening night party of a play is going to be right after the play, not right after a meal. If anything, it’s likely to have food served at it because it’s been a while since anyone has eaten. “Postprandial” is not the word to use to describe an after-play party.

This reminds me of a joke my oldest son told me recently: “I use big words I don’t understand in order to seem more photosynthesis.”

So, is Elliot Easterbrook the sort of man who would use ten dollar words he doesn’t know the meaning of in order to impress people, or did the writers of the episode just get it wrong? Or did they just not care? In television in the 1980s writers tended to rate accuracy below everything else—it would be easy to imagine them mis-using a word because they figured that 99% of the viewers wouldn’t know what the word meant and would assume it was used correctly. This is actually a bit frustrating as it would shed more light on the character to know the answer. On the other hand, he probably won’t be alive for much longer, so it may not matter much.

We skip to the intermission, where we follow Walter on his way to the bar and pass various people who are complaining about how bad their day was. Walter takes it as a bad sign that no one is talking about the play. Danny O’Mara then walks up to Elliot Easterbrook and tells him, “all you TV blowhards know about theater is makeup and hair.” They trade insults for a while until Elliot leaves. Walter tells Jessica that he needs many more drinks that he just had (he brought Jessica white wine and had ordered, for himself, a “double anything”). He leaves, telling her that he’ll see her at the party.

The scene then fades to the party.

There’s some small talk, then a broadcast of Elliot Easterbrook’s review of the play. I question how influential his reviews can be if they’re are broadcast close to midnight, but in any event I think it’s worth quoting the review in its entirety:

It is always difficult to review a mystery without giving away the plot. This unpalatable witch’s brew is such a muddle of clichés and troll dialogue that it is impossible to figure out the plot. Neophyte playwright Walter Knapf at least has the excuse of inexperience. As for the cast, Vivian Cassell brings her usual long-in-the-tooth charm to the lead. And Barbara Blair shines briefly as a witch. Tony Jasper as the woodsman is appropriately wooden. If you’re looking for a good thriller, walk right by the Woolcott Theater. The only mystery about this one, folks, is how it ever got to Broadway in the first place.

The scene fades to later on with Jessica putting her coat on to leave. Shayna asks her to stay until the early newspaper reviews are out but Jessica protests that it’s after 1am. They then notice that Elliot Easterbrook has accepted the invitation to join the party, which everyone finds surprising. Walter then staggers in, drunk, holding an early editing of the next day’s newspaper. He proclaims that the play will run forever: Danny O’Mara wrote them a glowing review.

Mainely Murder is mainly magnificent, the one must-see of the season. This is a real audience-pleaser, just the kind of show a certain low-caliber, high ego TV critic is sure to hate. You know who I’m talking about. That Live at Five guy who thinks he’s smarter than you. If he hates this show, maybe you should let his TV station know you’ve had enough of his condescending crap.

Jessica’s reaction while Walter reads this aloud is interesting:

This review is indeed quite surprising. It doesn’t square with what O’mara’s warning to Jessica, nor with common sense.

Anyway, Elliot Easterbrook expresses outrage at this review and declares that “someone has to silence this undereducated, ill-informed windbag… permanently.” He then storms off.

The police get a call reporting that shots were fired and dispatch units to the location of the call. Two uniformed officers break down a door, then see the corpse of Danny O’Mara lying on the floor with Elliot Easterbrook standing over the corpse holding a gun pointing at the corpse. They never show the whole thing in a single shot, but I think that the most interesting part is how the gun is being held:

After the camera pans up to Elliot’s face, which registers minor confusion and surprise, we fade to black and go to commercial.

It turns out I was wrong about who was going to get murdered. It’s easy to imagine a lot of people wanting to kill Elliot. Who would want to kill Danny?

When we come back from commercial break, Danny’s assistant, accompanied by Jessica for some reason, show up at the scene of the crime. The detective for the case, Lieutenant Jarvis, is interviewing Elliot.

Elliot claims that he arrived only moments before the uniformed police officers and picked up the gun because he was worried that the assailant was still present. Jarvis isn’t buying it, so Jessica pulls him aside and points out that Mr. Easterbrook left the restaurant only moments before they did and they came straight here, so Elliot wouldn’t have had time to kill Danny. Further, if the shots were just fired, wouldn’t there be a smell of gunpowder and furthermore, why does Danny’s skin have a bluish tint?

Jarvis, who is at the end of a double-shift and exhausted, doesn’t have time to think about these things and directs that Elliot be arrested. As Elliot is being escorted to the police station, he rudely tells Mrs. Fletcher to mind her own business and to leave his defense to more capable hands.

The next scene is back at the theater, where Shayna and the director talk about how wonderful things are, largely thanks to Danny O’Mara’s positive review. There is also some discussion of a positive review by another critic. When Barny is asked if he’d read it, he replies that he wrote it. Writing columns for reviewers in their voice makes their lives so much easier they’re much more likely to give you positive coverage in exchange for saving them the time of doing the writing themselves. Not too much is made of this but it’s clearly foreshadowing of the only possible explanation for why Danny O’Mara wrote such a glowing review of such an awful play.

There’s also some discussion of Shayna wanting Walter to make more changes, and then he privately talks to Jessica to ask for help. She just wants to get back to Cabot Cove, but he reminds her of the theme in her book upon which this play is based—not walking away from injustice. So Jessica resolves to stay and figure out who killed Danny.

This scene is quite weird. I get that Jessica wants to get away from the play as soon as possible but this is the first time I can remember that she ever wanted to desert a place more than to solve a murder, even for a moment. Usually someone is trying to get her to leave and she’s refusing. It feels out of character.

The first stop in Jessica’s quest to satisfy justice is to go to the office at his newspaper. The scene at the newspaper opens with an interesting joke about the former theater critic that Danny replaced. He was a very gentlemanly reviewer and the best theater critic that the paper ever had, but after his stroke he couldn’t handle broadway anymore and so is reviewing television programs. Murder, She Wrote doesn’t often go in for self-referential humor, but this is certainly not the first time. In Steal Me A Story, a producer suggests to Jessica doing a show called The Jessica Fletcher Mystery Hour, about the real-life exploits of a famous mystery author solving crimes. Jessica replies that she doesn’t write fist fights, bedroom scenes, or car chases, so who would watch it?

Like in that case, I think that this joke relates to the Murder, She Wrote theme of old things still being valuable. It’s a bit tangentially; the theater being so much more important than television isn’t going to be deeply relatable. Not many people born in the 1910s or 1920s (and hence be in their 60s and 70s in the 1980s) will have gone to shows on broadway, or even off-broadway. They might, as youngsters, have attended local plays before movies largely replaced them, but I doubt that they’d have remembered those as high art since they probably weren’t high art. People born in the 1930s and after almost certainly would not have gone to any meaningful number of plays.

The gentlemanliness of the former critic is also interesting. Supposing that he was seventy at the time of his stroke, and that this was five years ago, he’d have been born in 1913. The 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s were not a time people were gentlemanly—being modern was the big craze then. So his formative years would not have valued gentlemanliness. People might have tried to be gentlemanly in the 1940s and 1950s, and perhaps into the 1960s, so maybe he adopted it, but that was not a big thing in the 1970s. On balance, I’d guess that this aspect of him having been gentlemanly was pure wistfulness, without any direct reference in reality. That is, it was mere, abstract, “things were better back then”. (Of course, it can be simply explained as individual quirkiness, and need not be taken symbolicly.)

Anyway, Jessica pretends to be doing research for a new book, and pumps the editor for information. It turns out, though, that Danny didn’t come into the newspaper to write his column. He wrote from home. There’s an interesting bit where Jessica asks if it was picked up by courier, and the editor laughs and says that they’re all using computers, these days. O’Mara wrote it on his home computer and send it in via modem. The computers time stamp everything, so he can say that the review came in at 11:15pm.

Jessica next goes to visit Denise at Danny’s apartment. It’s a little odd that she should be cleaning up his effects at his apartment rather than a family member doing that, but it saves on time and casting, and Murder, She Wrote generally fits a ton into a fairly short time, to say nothing of having a cast so large they rarely get to develop a character in more than a few lines.

Denise shows Jessica Danny’s program from the night before, on which he took notes. Jessica looks it over and remarks that it’s odd that the notes are nothing like Danny’s review. Denise says that she didn’t have a chance to look at it, does so now, and remarks, “Well, this is weird. Why would his review be so favorable?”

This is a very strange question for Denise to make, seeing as how she was Danny’s assistant. Barney Mapost introduced her as “Danny’s right hand, his left hand, and entire brain.” She said that this was inaccurate and she was more like the guy who walks behind the elephant in the parade. Either way, it’s weird that she had no idea what he thought of the play since she sat next to him at the opening performance.

At Jessica’s request, Denise then shows her the original review which was on a 5 1/4″ floppy disk.

This is the same thing as what Walter read out loud the night before. Curiously, it contains no reference to Jessica, despite the director remarking in the banter I summarized above that Danny had given Mrs. Fletcher “quite a nice mention.” But there’s plenty of space on the screen below the text, and nothing there. Be that as it may, Jessica looks it over and remarks that it doesn’t square with Danny’s notes.

Denise replies, “I gather you don’t write on a computer, Mrs. Fletcher.” This makes no sense as a reply; writing on a computer doesn’t make people radically change their opinions of the quality of fiction. Instead of pointing that out, Jessica merely replies that she doesn’t, and far prefers her bucket-of-bolts typewriter. It’s noisy, but comfortable. Denise then says that she should consider switching, but Jessica refuses, saying that she’s heard too many stories of people pressing the wrong button and losing everything. Denise then demonstrates that it’s not quite that easy. She deletes the review from the disk, then undeletes it to show that things are recoverable.

Jessica, eagle-eyed as always, remarks on there being two files that were undeleted. They then look at the file which had been deleted before they started:

Denise is perplexed at the existence of this review, so different from the one that published. Why did he change his mind so drastically, she asks in a way that suggests she doesn’t have two brain cells to rub toghter? Jessica theorizes that whoever killed Danny O’Mara also killed his review.

The scene shifts to Police headquarters where Jessica gives his information to Lt. Jarvis. Jarvis says that the substitution of the review doesn’t rule out Easterbrook, but Jessica says that he was on the air giving his review of Mainely Murder at 11:15pm and she checked—it was a live broadcast. I find that more than a bit odd—who would watch a theater review at 11:15pm at night? And why bother broadcasting it live? That first part is probably more germane to the episode as a whole—how influential can a TV theater critic be if his reviews are broadcast live at 11:15pm at night? Granted, New York City is the city that never sleeps, but even so.

Anyway, in the conversation some weird details come out. The police got an anonymous call saying that shots were fired, but O’Mara was killed with only one bullet and no other bullets were found in the apartment. None of the other tenants ever heard any bullets being fired. And the coroner’s report indicates that O’Mara might have died earlier than he was found.

Jessica suggests that the killer must have been someone from the play, but Jarvis says that it’s likely that everyone can alibi each other at the party, and asks her to try to recall who showed up late. (Answer: Walter, but Jessica only realizes what she’s done as she walks out.) Jessica calls Walter from a pay phone at the police station but only gets his answering machine, and leaves a message saying that it’s urgent that she talk to him.

She then goes to see Elliot, who has quite an office.

Are we really to believe that a TV theater critic whose reviews are broadcast at 11:15pm at night has a corner office? Anyway, Elliot has his unpleasantness dialed up to 11, as usual. Jessica asks him if it doesn’t get tiresome being so tiresome, but he just replies in a tiresome way. They hit something of a detente and discuss the case.

Jessica wonders who wrote the fake O’Mara review, and Elliot suggests the director, since O’Mara had panned his last five plays. Jessica goes to talk to him.

The directory, though, is only interested in blaming Jessica for finding the real review of Mainely Murder, saying that now the play is doomed. I have trouble believing that a glowing review could do much to save a play as bad as Mainely Murder is supposed to be, but I guess that’s neither here nor there. The only thing that really comes up is that everyone was at the party, the whole night, except for Walter.

Jessica tries to find Walter at his apartment, but he’s not there. Jessica runs into Barney, taking down the quote from the O’Mara review. She all but accuses him of having written the fake review, but he replies that he never tried to imitate O’Mara because O’Mara wasn’t the kind of critic who appreciated being sent plugs. Walter is in the back of the theater working on rewrites. (I wonder why this theater would have office space for writers, but again this probably just a time-saving thing.)

Walter is saying that he put a lot of the original stuff back in and Shayna actually likes it. With all of the changes that went on, she doesn’t remember what she cut anymore! He thinks this will save the play. Jessica tells him to nevermind the play and to tell her where he was during the cast party. Lt. Jarvis walks in and says that the way he figures it, Walter was busy murdering O’Mara. He arrests Walter, and we go to commercial.

When we come back, Jessica and Jarvis are interrogating Walter in Jarvis’ office. Before anyone can say anything of substance, though, Jarvis sends for Mrs. Rizzo, who after some complaining says that she saw Walter in the hallway. She lives on the first floor of the building where O’Mara lived on the third. It was 11pm—she knows because the news just came on—and Walter banged on her door saying that he needed to speak to Mr. O’Mara. She told him that O’Mara lived upstairs, and Walter went away.

As a side note, I’m really curious how Walter was supposed to know what building O’Mara lived in. For that matter, why on earth did Mrs. Rizzo know that Danny O’Mara lived in her building, two floors up? A lot of people live in her building, and NYC is not a place where people get to know their neighbors, especially not their neighbors who live on a different floor.

Anyway, she leaves and Walter gives his version. He was hoping to find O’Mara and beg for mercy. When he couldn’t find O’Mara’s apartment he realized he was so drunk he couldn’t think straight, so he gave up and went out to get even more drunk. There is some general bickering, and a reference to a different casting for a part gives Jessica an idea.

She visits Martha Blair, who played the witch who, in the play, cast a spell to reduce a haystack to rubble. It turns out that she was romantically involved with Elliot Easterbrook in a very minor way. She had dinner with him, which consisted of four hours of him talking about himself. This was at Shayna’s instigation, so Jessica goes to talk to Shayna.

The conversation with Shayna doesn’t reveal much, but when she is previewing a tape of Elliot Easterbrook’s review in order to pull a few words out of context to seem favorable, it repeats the part where he said that Tony, as the woodsman, was appropriately wooden. This gives Jessica the clue she needs.

Jessica excuses herself to Shayna, saying that she needs to see a man about a play.

It’s interesting how Murder, She Wrote has a visual language all its own. The next scene has Jessica sitting (apparently) alone, on stage. We hear a door close, which means that Jessica has invited the murderer to her impromptu accusing parlor.

She calls out to him. It’s Elliot Easterbrook. She thanks him for coming, and he assures her that it is nothing more than curiosity.

Jessica explains how Elliot did it, though she frames it in a proposal for the plot of a new book. The setting is the theater, and the killer plans his crime meticulously. After the play he kills the victim, then two hours later puts in a fake call about gun shots in order to have the police arrive with him standing over the body and frame himself. Once the time of death is established to have been two hours earlier, he’ll be exonerated and it will be extremely unlikely anyone will look his way again. He created an alibi for himself by transmitting the fake review he’d planted to the newspaper from his own office, rather than from the victim’s apartment.

Elliot says that it sounds far fetched, but like a perfect crime. Jessica said that it would be, except that Molière was right—the theater is unpredictable. There was a last-minute cast change which Elliot didn’t know about because he came late. Thus he got it wrong in his TV review, but, critically, also in the fake review.

Elliot points out that even a fictional jury wouldn’t be likely to accept this as conclusive proof. Jessica agrees, but says that they would be willing to accept his TV station’s phone log. It shows a five minute call to the Chronicle at 11:15pm.

Elliot, crestfallen, says,”Even the finest works of art have their flaws. Congratulations, Mrs. Fletcher. The only thing missing is a motive.”

Jessica says that she’s wondered about that.

Elliot decides to tell her. It’s fascinating, so I’m going to quote it in full:

Imagine a young and impressionable writer who has his first play produced off-off-off Broadway. It’s not perfect, but he has talent, and it’s a start. And imagine a critic from a second-rate newspaper trying to make a name for himself. His review of the play is devastating. So devastating the young playwright never writes another play. No, instead, he becomes a critic himself and vows to best his destroyer at his own game. But it’s not enough. It’s not enough to eradicate the pain. Only one thing can do that.

At this point Lt. Jarvis walks in from the wings (Elliot had moved onto the stage, with Jessica) and announces his presence.

Elliot looks at Jessica in surprise.

The detective in the wings, Mrs. Fletcher? I suppose I should have expected a climax so cliché.

The uniformed officers escort Elliot away. Jarvis remains and talks to Mrs. Fletcher. He asks how she knew that the TV station logged its phone calls. Jessica replies, “Well, if they don’t, they ought to.”

And on that note we go to credits.

This was an ambitious episode, so I think its many plot holes can be at least partially forgiven. That said, it has a lot of them. I think, for me, the biggest is that the key evidence—the evidence by which Jessica knew who the murderer was and the only evidence she didn’t make up when she confronted him—never appeared in the episode. At no point when the fake review was read or put on screen did it mention the actor who played the woodsman. This is unusual for Murder, She Wrote. They’re normally better about showing us all of the evidence (that Jessica doesn’t lie about—they could hardly show us that). It’s not like there was any other evidence to lose track of and no excuse can be made on account of time. They put up the text of the review a second time, so they could have put up the relevant section of the review instead of just repeating the part that Walter read aloud at the party.

There’s also the issue that—if it had done so—the fake review failing to mention the cast change hardly proves that Easterbrook was the culprit. Anyone who wrote the fake review earlier in the day would have used the name of the actor who had been cast in the role, as would anyone who just didn’t pay close attention to the announcement, was in the bathroom, etc. Since the purpose of the fake review was to be discovered and cast suspicion on someone who would benefit from the play getting a good review it didn’t deserve, it’s not like there was a motive to get the fake review right. Mistakes in the fake review would draw attention to its inauthenticity, and thus help it serve the murderer’s purpose. So, not only did they not show us this evidence, it doesn’t really point to Elliot as the murderer anyway.

The part about Elliot Easterbrook framing himself is hard to know what to make of. On the one hand, framing himself with a fake time of death that will be disproved has some merit as a way of leading suspicion away from himself, but it only really makes sense if suspicion was at all likely to go his way. There was no real connection between him and Danny O’Mara, so there’s no reason why it would have. If anything, O’Mara seemed to hate him far more than he seemed to hate O’Mara. All clumsily framing himself did was connect him to the murder more than he would have been otherwise. That said, he was a narcissist with an obsession. It’s not entirely unbelievable that he loomed much larger in his own imagination than he did in anyone else’s and so he might assume he would be suspected because he assumed that everyone thought about him all the time.

That said, his approach to framing himself was riskier than the episode made it out. Estimating the time of death is not an exact science and it was so close to when he framed himself for that there was no guarantee that he would be exonerated. Indeed, all the autopsy report showed was that the time of death could have been hours earlier. “Could have been earlier” is not a slam-dunk acquittal. The transmitting of the review at 11:15pm would be a stronger alibi, but only if the falsity of the review was discovered (only if it is false does it show that the murderer did it rather than the victim). That only happened by accident and Elliot was in no position to do it himself if no one else did it for him, so this instance of framing himself is particularly weak.

To be fair, though, given that it would have taken the police several minutes, at minimum, to arrive at Danny O’Mara’s apartment after getting a report of “shots fired,” holding that Elliot had just shot Danny would entail him standing over the body, gun in hand, for several minutes. That would be quite strange, to say the least. I suspect that a defense attorney could make a lot of that.

Perhaps oddly, I actually find the motive in this episode to be on the more believable side. Superficially, of course, it’s ridiculous. Who could want to kill a person because they wrote a scathing review of his play twenty years before? And yet, Elliot Easterbrook comes off as a man consumed by hatred. Especially as Dean Stockwell plays him, he is an Ahab character. He cares for nobody and nothing because he’s obsessed with his white whale. Indeed, the part about him dating the young woman who played the witch didn’t add anything to the plot but it did add some very interesting characterization of Elliot—he spent four hours talking about himself. A man who can spend four hours with a beautiful woman talking about himself is the sort of man who can resent a scathing review of his play to the point of murder, and hang onto this resentment for decades. Also, the time frame works well. A man like Elliot wouldn’t go for murder immediately. He would brood for a long time before going there. Having spent decades wrapped up in his hatred, trying and failing to destroy Danny O’Mara through lesser means—that might might work him up to the point of murder. Especially considering how, in his early fifties, he might be starting to reflect on how his quest for revenge deprived him of a wife and children. He would blame O’Mara for that, too. Most people would not react this way, but this sort of hatred is the kind of mistake a human being can make. There’s no such thing as a good reason to make a bad decision, so motives for murder cannot be evaluated on the basis of whether there was a good reason to commit the murder. They can only be evaluated on the basis of there being a human reason to commit the murder. Offended pride, nursed for a long time—that is a human reason.

There’s an interesting question about how this episode falsifies all sorts of details in order to fit things in. For example, there’s no way that a TV theater critic is going to do a live broadcast of his review of a new play at 11:15pm at night. Similarly, there is such a thing as the morning edition of a newspaper, but it doesn’t come out on the streets for purchase before 2:00 am. Mrs. Rizzo knowing where Danny O’Mara lived when she lived on the first floor of her building and Danny on the third is beyond improbably. In NYC, people are extremely outgoing if they know who lives in the apartments right next to them. They have no idea who lives on other floors of their building.

The fake review and the real review being on the same disk is also an issue. If Elliot brought the fake review on his own floppy disk, he would have either had to write the “real” review which accorded with Danny’s notes on his program or else he would have had to copy his fake review onto the floppy disk that Danny saved his review on (or vice versa and copied the real review onto his own disk). This would have involved copying it to the hard drive, then removing his disk and inserting Danny’s disk. Further, the name he gave the file relied on Danny misspelling his version of it. Or else he did some weird file renaming. None of which is impossible, but is oddly convoluted and I’m pretty sure was not intended by the writers since Jessica didn’t mention it. A little more plausible would be to have typed the review onto Danny’s disk, but it would still have been an oddly lucky stroke that Danny had misspelled the filename of his review (since the real review being discovered was part of Elliot’s alibi and framing of someone else for it).

Many of these things were important to the plot, and in fairly irreplaceable ways. On the other hand, many of them were just shortcuts. I think that it’s important to cut Murder, She Wrote slack on these sorts of things because it’s hard to cram so much into 48 minutes as it is. This is something that may apply to a short story, but does not really carry over into novels. Shortcuts are nowhere near as forgivable when time is not so precious. (A big part of what I seek to do in my reviews of Murder, She Wrote episodes is to see what can be learned from them to bring over to my novels; Murder, She Wrote was great in spite of most episodes having fairly large plot holes, so if we can figure out what made it great in spite of them, perhaps we can borrow some of that and have something even better when our novels don’t have plot holes.)

The way that Jessica and Denise find the deleted file may possibly be classed under the heading of “shortcut,” but I can’t help but think it could have been done much better. They segway from the review being irreconcilable with Danny’s notes on his program (to say nothing of common sense) to a demonstration of undeleting files without any kind of natural hook for the change of subject. It’s not even a single change of subject, either. Jessica complains about pressing the wrong button and losing everything, not about how easy it is to accidentally delete a file. Back in the 1980s it was common for computer programs to crash and far too many people didn’t save their work until they were done. File corruption on disk was also a not-uncommon problem. Undeleting a file doesn’t address either. The issue is not that they didn’t take the time to address all possible failure modes on a computer, but that they could have written what they meant in the same time. Instead of “pressing the wrong button and losing everything” Jessica could have said “accidentally deleting the wrong file”. And instead of the business with the program, Jessica could have just asked if Denise really liked working on a computer. I’m not sure Denise being caught completely off guard by Danny’s not liking the show is fixable, though. She sat through the play with him. How could she be under the impression that it was possible he liked it? Even if he didn’t talk about it and she never noticed a single one of his reactions, shouldn’t she have picked up on what he likes and doesn’t like in plays?

Overall, and despite the many plot holes, I think that this episode was a lot of fun. As I mentioned at the start, this was an ambitious episode. It contained a play, drama about the production of a play, and even a layer about criticism of the play. Also, while the story has plenty of plot holes, it also has things which stick together. For example, it actually makes sense that Elliot chose the play that he did to use for his murder. He needed a bad play, but it would help if it had a lot of money riding on it, as, presumably, Mainely Murder did because of J.B. Fletcher’s name would attract investors. I think that what really makes it, though, is the ending. Elliot’s explanation of why he murdered Danny was poignant. Some of this is up to the skill of the actor, of course, but the writing rings true. “It’s not perfect, but he has talent, and it’s a start.” That is how an awful lot of writers starting out feel. And I think his ending, which probably should have been the actual ending, was great.

“The detective in the wings, Mrs. Fletcher? I suppose I should have expected a climax so cliché.”

There is a sense in which this is Murder, She Wrote poking fun at itself, but there is another level to it. Elliot is just a man, and not, in truth, a special man. It is fitting that when he is caught, he is caught as other men are. The essence of sin, in a sense, is the refusal to recognize that one is man. But Elliot should, indeed, have known that.

Next week’s episode, which is the final episode of season four, is The Body Politic.

On the tenth day of April in the year of our Lord 1988, the Murder, She Wrote episode Showdown in Saskatchewan first aired. It was the third from last episode in the fourth season. As the title implies, it takes place in Canada, making it the second episode this season to be set in the Great White North. (The first was Witness For the Defense.)

After some scenes of people driving in, we meet two of our main characters:

Her name is Jill Morton. She’s one of Jessica’s many nieces, which is why Jessica is going to be in this episode.

Here’s a better picture of the man she’s with:

His name is Marty Reed. As you might be able to guess, he’s a professional cowboy. Rodeo star is probably more accurate, since he does not in fact ranch cattle but ride ornery bulls and ornery horses and such-like.

After some discussion of dinner (and after-dinner) plans, Marty leaves and we meet another character:

Her name is Carla Talbot. She’s the wife of (aging) big time rodeo star, Boone Talbot. It comes up that it was Carla who invited Jill to spend the summer with her and Boone on the circuit; this places her in a difficult spot because she’s supposed to be watching over Jill, not being a pretext for Jill to live with Marty as if she was his wife. Jill’s mother has been calling Carla, making life difficult for her.

In the next scene, Jessica gets a call from Jill’s mother (Louise).

This was right after an establishing shot of Jessica’s home. I find this extremely domestic shot of Jessica quite interesting. They could have picked nearly anything for Jessica to be doing. They could have had her working at her typewriter or reading over galley proofs or reading a book or any number of book-related things. Instead, they chose to depict her cleaning her oven.

Jessica as detective is meant to contrast with Jessica as retired schoolteacher in Maine; with Jessica going to Canada there won’t be many opportunities to establish this dynamic. Taking a moment to lay it on thickly, here, works, I think.

In the next scene Jill is called to Carla’s trailer, but when she knocks, instead of Carla, Jessica comes out. Jill is pleased to see Jessica, but then realizes what she’s there for. Jessica owns up to having come in order to spy on Jill on behalf of her mother. They go for a walk to talk to each other. Jessica is compassionate and understanding, but also points out that Jill’s mother has a right to know what sort of a man Marty is, and what the situation really is. Jill doesn’t like it, but understands that Jessica is right.

Jessica meets Marty, who is very charming to her. We then meet another character:

His name is Luke Purdue. He works with Marty as some sort of partner/assistant. Marty invites Jessica to join them all for dinner at the restaurant that night, and she accepts.

At the restaurant there’s music and dancing. A rodeo clown named Wally introduces himself to Jessica by commiserating about not being able to go all night (she had begged off dancing again as the scene began, and he has a bum leg). Then we meet a new character:

His name is Doc Shaeffer. He’s the rodeo association’s official doctor, but Luke and the rodeo clown give him the reputation of not doing a good job. In fact, the rodeo clown used to be a rodeo player until he broke his leg and Doc Shaeffer set it wrong. In the present, Doc is drunk and ornery, and tries to force Carla to dance with him, but Boone intercedes, angering the doc. The Doc’s wife, Consuela, comes up to try to get him to back off. Doc does back off, though angrily, and Consuela apologizes to Boone.

A few minutes later, Doc comes over and issues a challenge: whichever of Boone and Marty can stay on Doc’s bull the longest gets $500 ($1206 in 2022 dollars). The bull is apparently an extremely mean bull, even by rodeo standards. Boone accepts, since it was a public challenge, despite this being an obviously stupid idea.

The bull is in an open pen and no one actually manages to get on the bull. It chases them around and hurts Luke pretty badly. In Doc’s trailer, he pronounces Luke to have a hairline fracture in his leg, and he’s going to give Luke a walking cast. Marty was also hurt, though slightly; the Doc says that he got a concussion and he’s medically disqualifying Marty for the next day at least. When Marty protests, he tells Marty to leave before he medically disqualifies him from the whole rodeo. Marty storms off. He runs into Jill, who tries to calm him, but he yells at her too and then leaves.

That evening Boone is looking pensively at the bull when he notices smoke coming from the medical trailer. He runs over to it and it turns out to be very much on fire.

After calling for help, Boone goes in, calling to Doc. Instead of finding Doc, he stumbles over Luke, on the floor, who he drags out. Others run up and he tells them that Doc and Consuela are still in the trailer, but they only find Doc, who is dead. Consuela comes running up. She cries out when she finds out that he’s dead, and she cradles his body, sadly repeating “Doc, doc.”

The scene fades to black, and we go to commercial.

When we come back it’s the next day and the rodeo is starting. Amongst others riding through the gates to kick things off are the mounties. The camera zooms in on the mounty who will conduct the investigation into Doc’s death:

His name is Inspector Roger McCabe. He begins his investigation by interrogating Boone. He seemed to think it a suspicious coincidence that Boone was up and saw the fire. He also asks about their previous altercation with Doc. When Boone asks what’s up, McCabe says that the preliminary report indicates that the fire may not have been an accident, and if it’s not, he’s going to have a lot more questions so Boone should keep himself available.

Jessica runs into Jill, who is upset because Inspector McCabe is asking questions about Boone and Marty. She doesn’t seem very concerned about Boone, but is very worried about Marty. She hasn’t seen him since their fight the previous day (this is when Marty yelled at her when she tried to calm him down when he said that Doc suspended him for a day due to concussion). She asks Jessica to investigate, for Marty’s sake.

Jessica wanders around until she finds Inspector McCabe. At first, he’s none to pleased to see her (she crossed a police tape to find him), but his manner changes completely when he discovers who she is, as he’s read most all of her books. When she explains what she’s doing there, he invites her in to the scene of the crime, to fill her in on what’s known.

The fire was started on the couch, and didn’t actually get much farther than that.

The fire marshall found traces of a “flammable liquid” sloshed on the couch. Further, a crude time-fuse fashioned out of a matchbook and a cigarette was used to ignite the flammable liquid. Jessica notices a warped piece of plastic which Inspector McCabe explains was an x-ray. Possible, he suggests, used as fuel to help start the fire, though if so the perpetrator was unaware that x-ray film doesn’t burn well. Also, the window above the couch was found shut, but not locked.

Jessica asks if his theory is that someone tossed the flammable liquid and the time-fuse in through the window and didn’t enter at all. McCabe says that it’s a possibility. Neither of them seem to consider that it would be unlikely that the perpetrator also tossed an x-ray in through the window.

Jessica asks why someone would do this. To kill the doctor? To kill Luke? To frighten someone? Just to destroy the trailer? McCabe says that the reason is immaterial; the doctor died of smoke inhalation and everyone know that he had emphysema, so any way you look at it, it’s murder. I think he missed the point of Jessica’s question, but she doesn’t press it.

In the next scene, Jill finally finds Marty, who is flirting with (or at least being flirted with by) a blond woman in a shiny red shirt.

After getting rid of the blond woman, Jill demands to know where Marty was. His story is that he was playing cards with “some of the boys”, had a few beers, and slept it off. She doesn’t entirely believe him, but he points out that she doesn’t own him.

The scene shifts to the rodeo, where Boone rides a bronco. He looks like he does a great job. The announcer says that it wasn’t a great ride. (There’s a bunch of dramatic looking from Boone to Inspector McCabe, so I suppose McCabe was supposed to have ruined Boone’s ride by making him unable to concentrate.)

The scene then shifts to the hospital, where Jessica runs into Consuela (Doc’s wife). After expressing her condolences, and just as Consuela turns to leave, Jessica remarks that it was very lucky that Consuela wasn’t in the trailer when the fire started. Conseuela says that it was unfortunate, as she never let Doc smoke his cigars. Jessica asks if there was a particular reason she wasn’t in the trailer, and she says that she wanted no part of Doc when he was drunk, so after helping him with Luke she spent the night with a friend. At this point she picks up on Jessica’s questions being pointed and asks what’s up. This is a frequent thing in Murder, She Wrote—Jessica asks remarkably non-subtle questions as if she is being subtle. I never really understand it; it mostly just makes Jessica look incompetent. Given that she’s an older woman she should be able to make being nosy look perfectly natural. Maybe it’s just that I’ve recently been reading Miss Marple stories. Miss Marple never arouses suspicions.

Anyway, Jessica tells her that the fire wasn’t an accident. Consuela isn’t surprised. Doc was a mean man and not good at what he did, so he had a lot of enemies. She mentions that before he worked at the rodeo he worked in a prison for ten years, and she wondered if he might have been on the wrong side of the bars. She’s not sorry he’s dead, she only feels relief.

That conversation over, Jessica visits Luke. He’s fine except for his leg, but when the orderly offers to get him an x-ray, he aggressively refuses it. As he’s going to leave Inspector McCabe shows up. Luke is in a hurry to get back to the rodeo, so McCabe offers to drive him there.

Luke scoffs at the idea that anyone was trying to kill him. His enemies would face him down with a knife, not set a fire. When Jessica asks if he remembers anything, he says that he kind of woke up at one point and heard footsteps and a jangling, like of fancy spurs. He was on a lot of pain killers, though, so he’s not sure of anything.

In the next scene Jill is giving Marty a massage while she tries to talk about their future. Marty will have none of it. Their agreement was one season on the circuit then she would go back to college and hit the books.

In the next scene Jessica talks with Carla. It comes up that Wally (the rodeo clown) had Luke as a manager when he was injured; he didn’t like the look of the bull but Luke made him ride it.

In the next scene Inspector McCabe is talking to Consuela. Jessica comes up and asks if it was generally known that Luke was heavily sedated. Consuela says that it is, but Doc kept asking Luke questions anyway, such as where Luke worked before the rodeo and where he lived. Consuela takes her leave, then Jessica tips McCabe off about the rodeo clown.

Jessica is pulled away from this conversation by Jill, who wants to talk to Jessica. She asks Jessica for advice about Marty, who she loves and she feels loves her too, but who she also suspects isn’t ready for commitment. Jessica gives her the advice to talk to Marty about her concerns, and to ask the hard question, and if he won’t answer, then that is her answer. At this point Marty steps out of his trailer and a child cries out “Daddy! Daddy!” and runs up. He picks up the child, then kisses the woman who was with the child and asks what she’s doing here.

Well, we now know why Marty is afraid of commitment (with Jill). We get a few significant looks between the various parties, and we go to commercial break.

When we get back from commercial break, we get a very strange scene:

Her name is… actually, we don’t learn her name. Based on the credits, it might be Mona. Anyway, she’s his wife. She stays home during the rodeo season because they have a little ranch back home, and Buster is too young for all of the traveling. She’s just so gosh-darn lucky to be married to Marty, who is the greatest. She’s so naive it’s cute, if completely implausible. She’s from a small town in Montana. If small town folk are known for anything, it’s for suspecting sexual interaction when attractive women are hanging around attractive men without supervision. I mean, have the people who wrote Murder, She Wrote never listened to country music? (An example that leaps to mind is Dolly Parton’s song Jolene, in which she begs a prettier woman to not steal her husband. It came out in 1973.) In the 1980s, a hick from Montana might not suspect something new like cocaine use or recently popular sexual perversions. Infidelity is as old as the hills. Be that as it may, Marty comes over to get her and she says it was nice meeting some of his friends—it’s the first time she’s ever met any of them.

The next scene is more rodeo, this time bull riding. Boone has a great ride, at least according to the announcer, though it doesn’t look any better than his bronco ride (which looked good but was called bad). Next up is Marty, who is thrown from the bull and then attacked by it while he’s on the ground. We see Boone, who hadn’t left the arena yet, start to run over and the scene goes to Jessica receiving a phone call in her hotel room (Jill is with her). It’s Carla. Boone’s been hurt. Jessica says that they’ll be right there.

The next scene is Marty talking to Boone. He asks Boone what he did that for, was he going for hero of the year? Boone asks if there’s any prize money for that, and Marty replies, “not as I’ve heard of.”

We get more of the story from the rodeo clown, who met Jessica on the way. The bull was going for Marty and Wally couldn’t distract the bull but Boone ran out in front of the bull, which then started going after Boone, and Boone is lucky to be alive.

They talk to Boone a bit, then Marty comes up, and when asked says that he feels fine except for his arm. “The medic says that it’s not broken, but what does he know?” Luke then walks up and angrily demands what Marty thinks he’s doing, pulling out of the competition. He only needs one more event to beat Boone. Marty explains that his arm hurts too much. (Marty’s arm is obviously fine, and is throwing the competition in gratitude, so that Boone will get the prize money.) Luke angrily storms off.

After this, as Jessica and Jill are walking away, a woman we haven’t seen before is in Doc’s trailer and calls out to no one in particular that someone is calling Doc long distance, and she doesn’t know what to do. (For those too young to remember, in the late 1980s telephone numbers were tied to particular locations, and telephone numbers for locations that were far away were expensive to call—often in the range of $.25/minute or more. Such calls were called “long distance”.) Jessica says that she will take the call. When she asks to whom she’s speaking, it turns out to be Warden Barnes of the Oregon State Penitentiary.

He’s been trying to return Doc Shaeffer’s phone call from last night. Doc had called at about 9pm, which Jessica says would have been 11pm Saskatchewan time. Jessica asks, and it turns out that the prison Doc Shaeffer had worked at was the Oregon State Penitentiary. He had quit 8 years ago, but for the decade prior had been the prison surgeon there. Jessica thanks the Warden, saying that he’s been extremely helpful. More than she can tell him.

Jessica then calls Inspector McCabe. She asks about whether there was oxygen in the trailer, since Doc suffered from emphysema. He checks the report, then says that there was. An oxygen tank was found on the floor inside the door, nearly empty. He remarks that it was strange that it was empty, but Jessica says, “No, not strange at all.”

The scene then shifts to a bar.

Jessica and Inspector McCabe come up. He gets Luke to identify a picture of Wally, but it was just a ruse to get his thumb print on the photo when he handled it to look at it. McCabe tells him this, saying that Mrs. Fletcher has a theory that Luke is actually an escaped prisoner from the Oregon State Penitentiary. He’s going to hold Luke in protective custody until he finds out. Luke strikes him down with a beer mug and tries to steal his gun, but police officers rush in from both entrances and point their guns at him. Luke knows that he had it and surrenders.

The explanation comes in the next scene, in Boone’s room at the hospital. Luke’s real name is Carl Mattson. He escaped from the Oregon State Penitentiary thirteen years ago. He grew his hair out and grew a beard, which is why Doc didn’t recognize him. Presumably Doc recognized his own handiwork in the x-ray he took of Luke’s leg, though, which is why the x-ray was destroyed. Luke must have heard Doc’s phone call to the penitentiary and knew he had to do something quickly. He staged the fire, ensuring that the x-ray was destroyed, and then used Doc’s oxygen tank to keep himself alive until Boone broke the door down.

Jessica then tells Jill that they need to go as they have a plane to catch. Outside, Jill worries because her Mom will kill her. Jessica says that if she does, it will be asphyxiation from excessive hugging. Then she hugs Jill and we go to credits.

This was a fun and interesting episode.

It was more complex than the typical episode, or at least the complexity was more pleasing. The character of Boone Talbot was interestingly drawn—the aging athlete who still has it but is recovering from injury and won’t have it for too much longer. This is a very real phenomenon. People do come back from injury to be on top, but it’s very hard, and over time it’s not even so much that the athletes are older as that they’ve got a lot of accumulated injuries, especially smaller ones. For a while they can work around this because they’re getting more skilled and doing fewer stupid things like staying up late drinking, but eventually the injuries add up. I like that he’s a genuinely good guy, too.

The character of Marty Reed is a great contrast to Boone, especially once we learn his true character. Initially he’s charming and has great manners and is a young up-and-comer with a very bright future. He turns out to have few morals and poor self control. Eventually this helps explain how he was working well with as bad a character as Luke. It also fit in that when his wife turned up and so his using Jill was exposed for what it was, he didn’t say anything at all to her. He was not a good man, but he was a polite man, and there was nothing polite to say.

I do wish that Carla had been given more depth. I’m not sure how old Carla was supposed to be. Cassie Yates, who played Carla, was 37 at the time the episode came out, and Larry Wilcox, who played Boone, was 41. Presumably they were both playing younger, so perhaps Boone was supposed to be in his mid thirties and Carla her early thirties? It’s a bit strange that there was no mention of children, for example, or how she got involved with Boone or even what she does other than come with him.

Jill Morton, Jessica’s niece, was also an under-drawn character. She’s foolish and a slave to her impulses, which wouldn’t be too bad as a starting point if there was some character growth from learning this about herself. There really isn’t. As she is, she’s mostly an excuse to get Jessica up to Canada and into this strange world with which she has nothing to do.

The murder itself was interesting and, by Murder, She Wrote standards, the motive was fairly plausible. Luke was a bad guy and the sort of person who would murder in order to protect himself, especially as far away from where his motive for murder would be known. He’s been a criminal and caught before, and he’s got no morals, so taking a criminal risk that didn’t look too big but turned out to be is in character. He was made just clever enough to do it but not so clever as to not do it. It was a nice touch that big prize money seemed within reach, which is why he didn’t just run away as soon as he figured out that Doc suspected him. On the other hand, that suspicion was a weak link in this plot.

Doc Shaeffer suspecting that Luke was actually an inmate at an Oregon penitentiary thirteen years ago who escaped, and suspecting this because he recognized something in Luke’s leg that showed up on an x-ray is… implausible. There’s really no aspect of this which is believable. It’s hard to believe that Luke had some sort of thing in his leg which would really stand out as so unique it would be memorable to someone who looked at a lot of x-rays. The idea that it was Doc Shaeffer’s handiwork is even less plausible unless Luke’s leg was badly damaged and the bone had to be held together with an unusually high number of titanium bolts, or something like that. Merely setting a broken leg badly isn’t likely to be as unique as a fingerprint. Moreover, even if Doc Shaeffer had seen something in Luke’s leg thirteen years ago which was highly memorable, why would he have heard about Luke escaping in a way that he would connect with what he remembered in the x-ray? Unless for some reason he knew that Luke had been in prison for a very long sentence (and why would a prison doctor know this?), on recognizing Luke in the present day from his x-ray, he’d have no reason to think that Luke had escaped. At most he’d think that he knew Luke a long time ago. On top of all this, Doc Shaeffer was a drunkard. They’re not known for their powers of recall.

All of this relates to two small plot holes: Luke’s aversion to x-rays. If, somehow, Doc Shaeffer had recognized Luke by the x-ray of his leg, this was a power unique to Doc Shaeffer. Luke had no reason to burn the x-ray Doc had taken of his leg and no reason to avoid an x-ray at the hospital. No one else could have recognized Doc Shaeffer’s handiwork from thirteen years ago when he was a prison doctor. This could be explained away, though, as Luke panicking because murdering someone makes one paranoid.

Next week we’re back to New York City for the episode Deadpan, where a critic is murdered after the opening night of a play based on one of Jessica’s books.

The episode Just Another Fish Story first aired on March 27, 1988 putting it late in the fourth season of Murder, She Wrote. It is a Grady episode, set in New York City, and features Grady being engaged to a young woman named Donna.

The first scene opens with an introduction to a shady character:

“Listen, just because it’s you, how about 1,000 for the lobster and 2,000 for the caviar?” he says quietly, so no one can hear. He asks if the other party wants it delivered at the usual time, and answers some question with, “Hey, they haven’t noticed so far. Why should they now?”

We then cut to Jessica in a taxi cab looking at her watch and saying to the driver that she would like to stop off at her hotel and freshen up but Grady said that they can’t change the time of the reservation for anything, so she doesn’t have time. The driver replies that if they hit cross-town traffic, she’ll be lucky to get there for desert, if the place is still open by then. A lot of places have opened and quickly closed on the block she’s going to.

Jessica mentions that Grady advised her to invest in this restaurant, and it seems to be doing well. The driver mentions that he took a lot of people to a Serbo-Croation restaurant at the same address last year, and it was doing well, then, too. This cab ride fit a lot of exposition into a short space, and made it all the more entertaining with glorious rear-projection and the occasional camera shake to make it seem like the car was going over a bump.

When they get to the restaurant, Grady is outside, dressed like a cowboy for some reason.

Apparently this is the dress code for accountants at Alice’s Farm Restaurant, where Grady works. Or perhaps it’s Donna, his fiancé, who works there, and Grady is just dressing appropriately for a theme restaurant. He doesn’t say.

Their sign is interesting:

I can’t help but wonder if this is meant to be a reference to Arlo Guthrie’s song, Alice’s Restaurant. It was a somewhat famous 1967 anti-vietnam war song (sort of) and also a film of the same name based on the song. I’m pretty sure that the plot has nothing to do with the song or the movie; at most it would be meant for a humorous moment.

When they get inside it turns out that the shady character from the first scene—his name is Chaz—is the maître d’ of the restaurant and cannot find their reservation. He keeps interrupting the conversation to welcome famous people and bring them to their table.

Chaz excuses himself to see to someone exceptionally famous and a new character, Doug, walks over and greets Grady.

He’s apparently the brother of the Alice after whom the restaurant is named. They have a convenient arrangement: he stays out of her kitchen and she stays out of his books. Once he finds out that their reservation has been lost he angrily finds Chaz and points him to the reservation. Chaz claims he mis-heard the name and sheepishly says he’ll have their table ready in a few minutes. Doug takes them to the bar to buy them some drinks.

A famous video artist named Narissa walks in and hands Chaz money to get her a table, which he gladly does. Doug walks up and tells him that he’s had it with Chaz selling off tables and snatches the bribe, but Chaz snatches the money back and replies, “Look, amigo, I don’t take orders from some punk who rides in here on his sister’s apron strings.” Doug angrily walks off to the kitchen where he talks with his sister about what a problem Chaz is.

Doug suggests buying Chaz out but Alice doesn’t really care that Chaz takes bribes since he brings in a lot of investors and also attracts the right sort of clientele. In her words, “Look, he brings in the right kind of people, OK? The kind of people who think there’s something chic in paying $22.50 for fried chicken.” That would be $53.47 in 2022 dollars, which for an exclusive Manhattan restaurant isn’t all that expensive. Considering that in 2018 you could get 10 gold-covered chicken wings for $30 (I’ve got a post talking about its symbolism, btw), this is closer to the value-side of Manhattan pricing than it is to the Ritz.

It also puts the character of Chaz in a strange light. He’s sleazy, but his partners accept him being sleazy. Also, for that matter, he’s a partner. It’s a bit weird that he’s stealing from the restaurant for relatively petty amounts, considering that the restaurant is, at the moment, highly profitable, and he’s making plenty of money on bribes for tables, too. Greed knows no bounds, however, so it’s not implausible.

Back at the bar, the bartender, Harry, is pouring wine for Jessica. The same wine he poured for “Tennessee”, presumably Tennessee Williams. Jessica likes it.

Given that Tennessee Williams died five years prior to this episode, that bottle must have been open for a long time. He then does something where we get a closeup. I don’t know what it means, but it’s got to be a clue—Murder, She Wrote doesn’t give closeups for non-clues.

He said that he’s got a wine cork signed by Hemmingway. Given that Ernest Hemmingway died in 1961 and this restaurant is only a year old, it’s a bit strange that he keeps this treasured memento here. Anyway, we can see that the drawer has no handle and Harry uses some sort of knife to open it; it has scratches from where he did that many times before.

Shortly after, another character comes up.

Her name is Mimi and she writes a gossip column. Harry introduces her to Jessica with, “meet a real writer.” She’s rude and brash, and also seems to be given Jessica and Grady’s table.

They don’t have long to lament that their table has been given to another, though, as Grady’s fiancé Donna walks in.

Fun Fact: in real life Michael Horton, who played Grady, and Debbie Zip, who played Donna, are married (and were at the time of filming, too).

Donna is thrilled to meet Jessica and, if anything, is even more nervous than Grady is. She also has the news that her parents are throwing a party for her and Grady at their house up in Fishkill and she’d like terribly if Jessica could come. Her parents are looking forward to meeting both Jessica and Grady.

It strikes me as a bit odd that Grady is engaged to their daughter and they’ve never so much as met him, but the 80s were a strange time.

Jessica asks them to tell her about their plans for the wedding, and is greeted with an embarrassed silence. Neither one wants to be responsible for making any decisions and the conversation devolves into them assuring the other that whatever the other wants would be fine.

Finally they’re seated at a table and Jessica tries to order caviar. The restaurant is out of caviar, though, but the waiter recommends “Alice’s Farm Caviar”, where instead of fish eggs it’s made of “oeufs de poulet”, aka chicken eggs.

Presumably they’re out of caviar because Chaz sold it. This means that he’s not only greedy and dishonest, but also stupid. It’s one thing to steal some lobster and caviar such that they need to be ordered more frequently than makes sense. It’s another thing to clean the place out; that just draws attention.

By the way, given how the place is southern-country themed and sells fried chicken for $22.50, why do they have lobster and caviar in their freezer?

Alice comes over and thanks Jessica for her investment and asks how the food was. Jessica says that it was marvelous. She didn’t know it was possible to get yellowtail on the east coast, and Alice admits that it was frozen. Jessica is surprised; she never would have guessed that.

In the next scene, Grady and Jessica drop Donna off at her place, then Grady smashes his fingers in the door getting back into the cab. Jessica relates the story of how Frank (her deceased husband) had a broken leg when she and he got married.

The scene then shifts to Chaz stacking up boxes of frozen lobster in the empty kitchen (presumably it’s late at night). He checks his watch, then the scene shifts to the next morning. The phone rings while Grady is singing in the shower so Jessica answers the phone. It’s Donna, in distress.

The police have come to her apartment to take her to the restaurant. Chaz was just found murdered at there. Then the scene fades to black and we go to commercial break.

It seems a bit weird that they are escorting Donna to the scene of the crime, but there is an explanation and we find out what it is as soon as we come back from commercial break:

It turns out that there is a ledger that has entries whited out, and the detective wants to know what they were. When Donna says that she doesn’t know off the top of her head. He asks her to find out. Now.

Lt. Rupp goes to look at the body and Jessica follows to ask if Donna can look up the books after the weekend (because of the party). In the freezer, where the corpse was frozen, Jessica finds a pocket knife tucked away.

We never got a good look at the tool that Harry used to open the drawer, but it might well have been a pocket knife, which means it’s highly like that this is his pocket knife.

The cause of death is currently unknown. The victim was slashed across the chest but the wounds seem too shallow to cause death. He was also hit on the head by something. After Rupp is done examining the body he talks to Doug about a slip found on the body. Alice interrupts to announce that they’re missing six cases of lobster (Lt. Rupp had her check). That’s about $1,500 worth of lobster ($3,564 in 2022 dollars). Lt. Rupp suggests that Chaz interrupted a thief at work.

That’s a curious suggestion because, while in real life it might be plausible, we know it wasn’t the case because we’re watching a murder mystery and that would be a completely unsatisfying solution. As a result, it makes Rupp look a little dumb, or at the very least not clever, since we know he has to be wrong.

There’s a small interlude where Grady is reluctant to go up to meet Donna’s parents because, he reveals to Jessica, several years ago he worked for Donna’s father for a few days then was fired. Then Mimi calls and asks for a breakfast date with Jessica, and Grady accepts on Jessica’s behalf. Jessica doesn’t like this but since it would be convenient to pump Mimi for information, she goes.

Mimi gossips about the restaurant they’re at and in so doing reveals that it’s the restaurant at which Alice had worked before opening up her farm restaurant. Moreover, Alice took Harry and Chaz with her when she left. Valentino, the owner of the restaurant, was absolutely furious. I suppose Chaz could have been the maitre d’ here, though his style would certainly seem to clash. But what did Harry do? This doesn’t seem like the kind of restaurant to have a bar, and certainly when we pan over the restaurant, none is visible. So what did Harry—a lifelong bartender—do there?

Mimi then gets a message on her beeper, asks the waiter for a phone, and calls whoever paged her. She discovers that her fingernail designer has been arrested and—since she has a major party to go to that evening—she has to go and bail him out. She asks Jessica to messenger her a bio for the article Mimi is writing, then leaves after handing Jessica money for her portion of the breakfast since she always pays her own way because of journalistic ethics.

There’s an interesting gag which happens as they leave. Someone tells Valentino to turn off the ambiance tape as no one is listening anymore, which he does, and and the restaurant goes silent. As Jessica comes up to the register, we see that she and Mimi were the only customers.

Jessica goes to pay the bill and Valentino tells her the meal is on the house. Besides, he adds, it’s easier than starting a new register tape. This gives Jessica an idea, which she presents to Lt. Rupp over at police headquarters.

Jessica explains that perhaps Chaz closed the register out early and pocketed the money from later meals. Donna explains that it’s consistent with the white-out entries, which always had smaller amounts written in—after Donna paid the larger amount. Rupp asks why Chaz would rip himself off and Donna explains that Chaz was ripping off the investors in the restaurant.

Rupp asks for a list of the investors and who had access to the books, since anyone who found this out could have a motive to kill Chaz. When Jessica objects, he threatens to arrest them for suspicion of murder. While the charges wouldn’t stick, it would take all weekend to process them, so it would be faster for them to just get him the information he wants.

In response to an accusation from Jessica that he’s having them do all of his work, he tells her that he found out that the blade which caused the wound was “a sickle-shaped, jagged-edged knife.”

At lunch the next day, Jessica is enjoying the fish, which was also previously-frozen yellowtail. it was left out over night to defrost, Alice thought by Doug but he disclaimed this. Jessica says “Oh my.”

“I think I just found our sickle-shaped murder weapon, and we just ate it,” Jessica says. (This makes the title of the episode a bit on-the-nose.)

“Yellowtail” can actually refer to several different species, but apparently the yellowtail amberjack is the most common. Here’s what it looks like before eating:

I can see the sick-shape of the dorsal and anal fins, but I’m having trouble believing that the fins could be strong enough to cut deeply enough into a human being’s chest to cause fatal wounds. There’s a lot to get through, and the vital stuff is protected by ribs. A fin, when frozen, might be sharp, but I doubt it’s got the structural integrity to cut through bone.

Actually, I guess the writer’s thought the same thing because in the next scene—Alice and Jessica are in Rupp’s office—it comes up that the wounds were not the cause of death. (The police did find traces of the victim’s blood on the fins, btw.) Rupp wonders who would use a fish as a weapon to attempt to murder someone in a kitchen full of much better weapons.

Jessica suggests that the person caught Chaz steeling, then Chaz attacked them and they defended themselves with the fish because it was close at hand. It fits the position of the body, Jessica says, and he might have bumped his head as he stumbled back. Rupp replies that he needs to read one of Jessica’s books. (Also, it comes up that Alice was home with her brother when Chaz was murdered. They live together because no one can afford to live alone in Manhattan.)

The only problem with this theory is that it doesn’t account for how the fish got out of the freezer and into the kitchen. If the frozen fish was the closest thing to hand in the freezer, where Chaz was killed, the killer would have had to carry it out to the kitchen and leave it on the counter in order for Alice to have found it there, defrosted, the next day. It’s hard to see how anyone could have a motive to do that, but that is especially the case for someone who struck out in self defense.

In the next scene, Jessica visits Grady and Donna, who are working on the information that Rupp wants. Grady can’t make the investors’ investments add up to the total capitalization of the restaurant and Jessica suggests that there are silent partners. There is also a list of initials nearby, one of which matches Mimi Harcourt’s initials, and Jessica takes a cab ride over to see if she can find out from Mimi that this is correct.

It is. Chaz talked her into investing, promising her secrecy, then blabbed all over town about Mimi’s involvement. Jessica all but accuses Mimi of murdering Chaz, so Mimi produces an alibi—she was in her apartment all night with Doug (Alice’s brother).

Jessica confronts Alice about this, who admits that she lied, but now swears that she didn’t leave her apartment all night. She lied, not for herself, but to give Doug an alibi. (I don’t know that a sister swearing her brother was home would count as an alibi… for precisely this reason. A sister might be 1% better than a mother as an alibi, but that’s not saying much.) Doug takes offense that she thought he needed an alibi, and they squabble for a bit. Then Jessica asks if there would be many people interested in cases of stolen lobster.

This leads Jessica to talk to Valentino, who, after all, is not an unreasonable guess for the purchaser. Chaz had a relationship with him, and he had no great love for Alice’s Farm Restaurant. Jessica’s pretext is that she is thinking of setting a novel in a restaurant and wants to do research. Of course, Jessica discovers the boxes of lobster left out on the counter.

She accuses him of it and he more-or-less admits to buying them from Chaz. How else can I get lobster and caviar at reasonable prices, he asks? Then Grady calls calls her at the restaurant because Donna broke off the engagement.

They talk, then Lt. Rupp comes and finds Jessica. He thanks her for putting him onto Valentino, as his alibi “won’t hold minestrone.” Jessica points out that this doesn’t make any sense—Valentino had no motive. Perhaps there’s someone they hadn’t thought of, though. Chaz wouldn’t have done his own deliveries. Harry then goes to show somebody his Hemmingway cork, but can’t find his pocketknife to open the drawer. Rupp notices this and accuses him of being the owner of the pocketknife found at the scene of the crime.

He denies it, but Jessica points out that it wouldn’t be hard to get fingerprints from the pocketknife, or to get Valentino to identify the guy who dropped off the stolen supplies. Harry admits that he worked with Chaz to scam the restaurant, but last night was weird because the supplies were out but Chaz was nowhere to be found. He went into the freezer to get one more box of lobster tail to complete the order—how he knew what the order was, he didn’t say—and then he saw Chaz just lying there. (He guesses that the pocket knife fell out of his pocket as he was backing up. Pocketknives jumping out of pockets is a common problem when walking backwards, and why one should always stick to walking forward if carrying a pocket knife in one’s pocket.)

Jessica goes back to Grady, who is trying to figure out what’s wrong and says that he snapped a little bit when Donna said that she was calculating the value of the lobster and caviar that was stolen—Jessica interrupts him in surprise that caviar was stolen, too. When she confirms that Donna said lobster and caviar, she realizes who did it.

Jessica then excuses herself.

We next see Donna packing when there’s a knock on her door.

Jessica points out that the only way she (Jessica) knew about the stolen caviar was because Valentino told her. The only way Donna could have known about it was if she had seen it the night Chaz was killed.

Donna tearfully admits that this is true. She thought she made a mistake when she heard at dinner that they were out of caviar, since she had just paid for a shipment of it the day before. She asked Chaz and he told her to come back later. When she arrived, he let her in and wasn’t even trying to hide what he was doing. He tried to bribe her to join him and got angry when he refused. He hit her and she ran away, accidentally going into the freezer. He followed her and was about to hit her again when she grabbed the frozen yellowtail.

He was going to hit her again, so she struck out with it.

The scene shifts from this recollection to Lt. Rupp’s office, where Jessica asks if he agrees that it was self defense. He says that it looks like it, but they should talk to the DA first thing on Monday morning.

Grady comes to the police station and he and Donna are reunited. There’s a cute bit where Grady finally confesses that he’s already met her father, and he fired him. Donna replies, “Oh, that’s fine. He fires everyone. He probably won’t remember it. He fired me, once…”

And we go to credits.

There’s something always a bit disappointing about a mystery whose solution is that the killing was done in self defense but the person who committed the justified homicide just didn’t admit it. It robs the mystery of the element of the detective restoring the right order of things, since things were not actually disordered. The detective still provides a service, but it’s not much of a service to explain that everything’s actually the way it should be. Instead of the brilliance of the detective, all that would have been required was a little bit of courage on the part of the innocent killer.

This episode was pleasantly low on plot holes, though to some degree that was because very little actually happened. No one had a motive to kill Chaz and no mysteries were untangled before coming to the solution; we kind of killed time until Jessica figured out that Donna did it.

The one plot hole I can think of is that it makes very little sense for Valentino to spend $3000 on lobster and caviar when he doesn’t have any customers. Where is he getting the money from, and who is he planning to feed them to? The problem is that if his business was only a little hurt, it wouldn’t be possible to set him up as a suspect (which I think the episode was trying to do). If his business was badly hurt, he shouldn’t have the money. It would have made more sense if his business was doing fine but he was unreasonably angry at Alice and was buying the stolen goods just to hurt her. That would have been a very minor alteration to the story.

Speaking of Valentino, it’s a historical curiosity that Sonny Bono played the character. It was later in 1988 that Bono became mayor of Palm Springs and thus began his political career. At the time this episode was cast, he was just a former rock star doing bit parts on TV.

Oddly, I can’t find much to talk about in this episode. The only real human drama in it was Grady and Donna. I’m more sympathetic to Grady than most people I know are, but instead of Donna being written to temper Grady, the writers took everything that people dislike in Grady (his cluelessness, social awkwardness, and timidity) and turned it up to 11. I think that this was done to make it believable that Grady could find a woman who would tolerate him, but this was the wrong way to go about that. It would have been much better to have a more normal woman—only a little mousy—who could see past his flaws. As it was, one is just left hoping that the scenes with Donna in them would be over sooner than they were.

(I want to be clear that I don’t think that this is a question of the actress, but of the part she was given.)

Lt. Rupp wasn’t a sympathetic police detective, given how much he bullied Grady and Donna to do accounting work for him, but he then was shifted into that role towards the end, especially in his collaborations with Jessica. This made him hard to like. You need enough consistency to feel like he’s a person in order to like him. A bully who suddenly turns nice just feels like a manipulative bully.

Alice and Doug were barely characters in the story, and the plot twist where Mimi spent the night of the murder with Doug was, perhaps, the least believable part of the episode. I think that they just cast about to find some man who was actually a character and since Harry was unavailable because he had to be at the scene of the crime to drop his pocket knife, the only other option was Lt. Rupp, and that would have been even less believable. I suppose that there was also Valentino, except they needed his alibi to be unable to hold minestrone. Anyway, I don’t think that Mimi was ever a very plausible suspect. There wasn’t much of a reason for her to avoid publicity about investing in the restaurant—she wrote a gossip column, not a restaurant review column—so even by the standards of Murder, She Wrote she didn’t have much of a motive.

Ultimately, I suspect that the episode was more of a comedy episode than a mystery episode. Grady is always played for laughs, and much of the beginning of the episode was making fun of expensive gimmick restaurants. As such, it’s bound to be a bit disappointing as a mystery. There can be jokes in mysteries—there certainly were plenty of funny parts in the Father Brown mysteries—but I don’t think that a comedy can really be a mystery. Actually, that’s not quite right. It can. But it is very difficult and must be a certain sort of comedy—the sort where the comedy is over at the end. Since the essence of a mystery story is that something wrong is put right, the problem the detective is trying to solve can generate comedy, but when the detective solves it, there should be nothing left to generate the comedy. If there is, the detective has not really put things right; at most he put a small thing right.

A good example of this is the movie Clue. It has some plot holes which are excusable for the sake of the comedy but make it hold together poorly as a mystery. Even if they had been resolved, though—for example, had Mr. Body’s butler been given a plausible motive for why he showed up and acted as he did—it would still not have been a satisfying mystery because the characters were all too shallow for the sake of the comedy. The third ending is my favorite because it comes closest to a satisfying mystery ending, but even so it’s a thing that needs to be enjoyed for the jokes, not the mystery.

That said, while I’m sure it can be done, it would need a very deft touch indeed. Clue didn’t try—part of why it was excusable that they didn’t succeed—but it feels like Just Another Fish Story tried a little bit. It also tried just a little bit at being a comedy, though. I suppose the lesson we can take away from it is: if you’re going to do something, commit.

Next week’s episode is Showdown in Saskatchewan. Jessica is going to go to the Great White North (in summer, when it’s green) to track down a wayward niece who’s at a rodeo. If nothing else, it should be picturesque.

Benedict Arnold Slipped Here first aired on March 13, 1988, which puts it in the later part of the fourth season of Murder, She Wrote. “Slipped here”, in the title, is, of course, a play on “slept here.” For those not familiar: there was a trend—or at least a supposed trend—of making places such as bed & breakfasts in the United States more interesting by claiming that a famous person once slept there. George Washington was a popular figure for this.

Also for those who aren’t familiar: Benedict Arnold was an American general in the American revolutionary war who switched sides and fought for the British. In consequence, he is regarded as a traitor in America and his name became, here, synonymous with betrayal and treason. Curiously, I don’t know how much that is still the case. American history largely isn’t taught, anymore, and the current fashion against patriotism heavily mitigates against being angry at someone for switching sides. Some of the punch of the episode will thus be lost to modern audiences.

The scene opens with Jessica and Seth entering an old and very cluttered house, with Seth holding a paper bag and asking Jessica, “Now what did you get for her?”

The “her” is an old woman named Tillie who doesn’t leave her house much owing to her age and health. They talk a little bit about what poor repair the house is in and what little evidence there is that the cleaning woman does anything, then they go up to see Tillie.

Tillie, however, is dead. Jessica and Seth are somber, but not shocked.

The scene shifts to a pawn shop:

The young fellow is Kevin Tibbles, son of Benny Tibbles (in the center), and on the right is the cleaning lady who doesn’t clean, Emily Goshen. She tries to buy something back from him at the price he paid for it six months ago, $30, but the price has gone up to $50 now. ($70 and $118 in 2022 dollars.) She accuses him of trying to cheat her and he accuses her of stealing it from Tillie’s house. Emily leaves and Kevin gives the news that Tillie is dead. Benny declares he had nothing to do with it and Kevin tells him that she died of natural causes. Benny begins to calculate what money he can make off of Tillie’s estate if he can get his hands on it.

The funeral is not very big.

Nothing happens at the funeral, other than Benny loudly sobbing and everyone rolling their eyes at him. I’m not sure who he was trying to impress; no one there had any power over the disposition of Tillie’s stuff. The scene then shifts to Jessica’s house after the funeral, where Amos Tupper visits.

Amos missed the funeral because he had to be in court, but while there he ran into Tillie’s lawyer, who told him about the contents of Tillie’s will. Tillie left her house to her grand niece, and the contents of the house to Benny Tibbles. Jessica was named executor of the will. Jessica is honored, but Seth points out that this leaves a lot of work for Jessica, since she’ll need to catalog what all it is so that death taxes can be paid.

The next scene is in a fancy antique shop, where Benny’s younger brother, Wilton, receives a call from Benny.

Benny asks him to come down to help him with Tillie’s stuff. Initially reluctant, he decides to go when he finds out a customer just purchased a settee for twelve thousand dollars which he bought from Benny for seventy (the $12k would be about $28k in 2022 dollars). He decides to go to Cabot Cove since there might be more where that came from.

In the next scene Eve Simpson, the town real estate agent, comes in and talks to Jessica and tells her that the house is in truly awful condition.

Jessica asks if there isn’t some redeeming feature? She recalls there being a legend about some American revolutionary war figure who slept there. Eve breaks the news that it was Benedict Arnold, which is hardly likely to make the house go up in value.

After Eve leaves, Jessica talks with Emily Goshen, who tells her that Tillie (who was a relative of Benedict Arnold on the wrong side of the sheets) told her that there was treasure in the house, though no one knows where it is hidden.

That night, Liza Adams, Tillie’s grand niece, shows up.

She is a gruff, unpleasant person. She says that she heard that Tillie is dead and has come for her inheritance—in cash. Jessica raises her eyebrows and the scene moves to early the next morning.

Jessica answers the phone and it’s Eve Simpson, who has a gentleman from out of town who is very interested in buying Tillie’s house. Jessica says that this may be premature, as legal ownership hasn’t been established yet, but she will certainly introduce Eve to Tillie’s grand niece.

Seth comes over while Jessica is on the phone. After she hangs up, he notices that Jessica has a squatter in her back yard.

Jessica told Eve, in Seth’s hearing, that she had advised Liza to stay close. When Jessica identifies the squatter as Liza Adams, Seth remarks, “Appears she took your advice. Couldn’t be much closer unless she moved in.”

The scene then shifts to Tillie’s house, where Jessica is taking inventory and Seth is sitting around complaining about how Tillie never threw anything out. Jessica then pauses to reflect on the sampler on the wall, saying that she’s gone past it many times but never really noticed it.

Samplers normally have an alphabet and a homely motto that shows off the worker’s skill. Whoever made this one was short on either skill or patience. (That’s Jessica’s appraisal.)

Shortly after, Benny, his Brother Wilton, Wilton’s lovely assistant, Liza Adams, and Emily Goshen show up (at slightly separate times) and, though bickering, insults, and general unpleasantness, all establish that they all have motives for whichever of them is going to be murdered.

Later that evening, Mr. Andrews—the gentleman from out of town who’s interested in buying Tillie’s house—shows up at Jessica’s house.

He’s hoping to get a look at the house. Jessica asks why he’s so eager and he explains he has a fascination with Benedict Arnold. He had worked in cryptographer during the war (World War 2) and in doing so worked with Americans, one of whom was a new Englander who made a joking reference to General Arnold’s mistress. He’s been writing a book on Benedict Arnold from a whole new perspective, and he requests to see the house.

Jessica says that she can’t let him in on his own and is so far behind in her writing that she can’t spare the time to accompany him. She offers to arrange with Eve Simpson to show him the house the next morning. He thanks her and leaves.

The scene shifts to somewhere—I think Benny’s pawn shop—where Wilton is adding numbers on an antique adding machine.

After each number he enters, he pulls the handle back to add it to the total. I can’t imagine why the thing is there. Perhaps to show how utterly cheap Benny is that he hasn’t bought an electronic calculator in the decades that they’ve been out?

Anyway, Wilton makes Benny an offer which is ridiculously low and Benny ridicules it, then tells Wilton to leave. Wilton tells Benny, “Well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Benny says that he’s heard it all his life and still doesn’t know what it means. “Be careful,” replies Wilton. “You might find out.” This raises the odds of the victim being Benny, but there were no witnesses to the threat, which is unusual for Murder, She Wrote.

The next day Jessica and Seth come to Tillie’s house but find the door unlocked. When they go in the door to the den is open, too. Jessica suggests perhaps Emily came back, and tells Seth to remind her to ask Emily for her key.

Then they find the corpse.

Seth goes to it and turns the corpse over, recognizes it as Benny, then takes a pulse and pronounces him dead.

Then we go to commercial break.

When we come back, Amos Tupper is at the house, investigating. He identifies the poker by the floor as the murder weapon and goes to pick it up until Jessica stops him and points out it should be checked for finger prints. Seth puts the time of death at around midnight, give or take an hour.

Eve shows up with Mr. Andrews, who asks about the presence of the ambulance and police car, but Eve tells him to nevermind all that and begins showing him the house. Then they wheel the body through. Eve tries to keep showing him the house but Amos puts the kabosh on that. Mr. Andrews agrees, saying that he’ll have to see the original part of the house some other time.

Some conversation ensues in which it comes out that Mr. Andrews intends to buy the house, have it dismantled and shipped to England, where it will be reassembled as a shrine to Benedict Arnold. Amos is none to pleased at this, taking a more traditional American view of Benedict Arnold, and is sent by Jessica out to get his police tape while he mutters, “next thing you know we’ll be celebrating Mussolini’s birthday.”

Mr. Andrews takes his leave and Eve stays behind to tell Jessica that she is in dire financial straights and desperately needs the sale of this house. She asks Jessica to give her some support in getting it sold, and upbraids the doctor for doing nothing. After she leaves Jessica remarks to Seth that Eve’s behavior is strange; she never even asked who had been murdered. This is an interesting detail; I don’t know that it makes Eve a suspect, though. Her interest is in selling the house and murdering Benny couldn’t help with that. If anything, it would get in the way since he was going to clean out all of the junk which a buyer wouldn’t want to have to haul away.

Seth and Jessica begin their inventory work, and Jessica notices that the sampler is missing. Seth says that there was a picture of it in the gazette last year; Tillie stood in front of it for a picture for her ninetieth birthday. He’ll see if he can get her a copy.

He wonders if everything will go to Kevin and Jessica suspects it will, then wonders how many people will attend Benny’s funeral. In the next scene we get the answer:

It’s the same number as attended Tillie’s funeral. Like at Tillie’s funeral, the scene lasted a few seconds and no one spoke a word.

The next scene involves Wilton, his assistant, and Kevin, and further cements that they are unpleasant characters. The one practical upshot is that Wilton and Kevin agree to go in together to buy Tillie’s house so that they can take possession of the antiques inside of it without Liza Adam’s interference. (That said, while Liza spoke some nasty words about Benny’s taking the stuff he inherited, she’s not actually causing any trouble for the disbursing of the goods. The holdup, if there even is one, is that Jessica and Seth are taking a long time to inventory the place.)

After that, Jessica talks to Liza Adams, who heard about Benny’s murder on Jessica’s radio and who was not in her tent last night because she went out for a walk. Also, she has no form of identification, having burned her birth certificate in 1970 and her driver’s license in 1972, which Jessica points out will make it difficult for her to establish a legal claim to the house. Liza is offended by this, rather than taken aback that her actions rendered it difficult for people who don’t know her to recognize her claim, proving that she’s stupid and unimaginative.

Hippy Moonbeam leaves and Eve Simpson calls Jessica and asks for help. She’s got a second bidder on Tillie’s house, but Mr. Andrews insists on seeing the rest of the house today. Can Jessica show him around? Jessica reluctantly agrees.

That evening, she shows Mr. Andrews around in the house. Just as they’re getting to the original room the doorbell rings and Jessica excuses herself. It turns out to be Amos who saw the light on and wanted to check that everything was OK. When they get back to the room, the light is on and Andrews is standing by the fireplace, soaking in the presence of Benedict Arnold. He talks about how magnificent it is, then excuses himself as he has to go home and write down the feeling before he loses it. Amos offers to give Jessica a ride home, which she accepts.

On the way out of the room Amos goes to turn off the light but there’s no switch by the door. Instead it’s on another wall by a bookshelf.

Amos remarks on how this is a strange place for a light switch, and Jessica explains that when they wired up these old houses they sometimes had to put things in rather strange places. What she doesn’t explain is why anyone bothered with a light switch in such a strange place. If a switch is that far out of the way, it’s easier to just use the knob or pull chain on the lamp itself.

They talk about the case as they leave and Amos says that his deputies looked all over the house and couldn’t find any sign of forced entry. If Benny got there after the killer, then the killer had to break in unless he had a key. The only people with keys, though, were Jessica, Eve Simpson, and Emily Goshen. The sheriff suspects Emily, but Jessica can’t bring herself to think that Emily is a thief, to say nothing of a murderer.

In the next scene Emily Goshen breaks into the pawn shop and tries to steal the brooche she was trying to buy back earlier in the episode, but she’s caught by Kevin and Wilton’s assistant who heard the sound of the breaking glass while they were discussing antiques in the next room.

Amos gets Jessica out of bed to come get Emily Goshen, as apparently they only have a single cell and he wouldn’t want to put a drunk in with Emily should one be arrested before morning. This clearly isn’t Jessica posting bail (Jessica later says that the Sheriff is releasing Emily into Jessica’s custody), so I guess Jessica is supposed to lock Emily up in a closet in her house?

Anyway, they get Emily out of the cell and upon seeing Jessica Emily asks if Jessica has been arrested too. Jessica asks Emily if she understands why she’s been arrested and Emily replies, “I can’t say that I do.” I guess she’s supposed to be mentally retarded? She didn’t seem like it before, but from this point on Jessica talks to her as if she’s a child and she replies much as if she is. Jessica asks if Emily took the sampler on the wall and she says that she wouldn’t want it. The words on it didn’t make any sense.

The next day Seth is over at Jessica’s house with a blow-up of the section of the photo that had the sampler in it. Jessica points out that Emily is right, the words don’t make sense. It should be “Pause and Relfect” not “Reflect and Pause”. Then Jessica suddenly realizes what this means: it’s a key to the treasure. Jessica looks at the picture of the sampler in the mirror. Most letters stay the same in the reflection, but capital ‘E’ becomes a 3 and the small ‘r’ becomes a 7. Seth points out the B, so it’s 3B7. Jessica figures that this might mean the third brick in the seventh row on the fireplace.

Jessica decides to set a trap by calling Eve Simpson, who was concluding a deal where Liza Adams was selling the house to Wilton for a handsome price, to tell her that the building inspector said that the fireplace was about to collapse and that the house would be closed until the fireplace was completely rebuilt. This is a little ironic because fireplaces are generally the most structurally sound part of a building—they’re masonry resting directly on the foundation. They often survive the building burning down or rotting away. That said, it’s not like anyone Jessica was trying to bait was likely to know that. Seth, who was standing next to Jessica, remarks, “Now that’s what I call throwing the fat into the fire.”

(For those not familiar, fat, once in a fire, will burn very intensely, producing a large flame.)

We next see the murderer letting himself into the trap:

The figure remains in shadows, his face framed out of the shot as he walks along with a flashlight, giving us time to talk over who it is with the people we’re watching with.

The murderer removes the brick in question and Amos switches on the lights, remarking, “Looks like you were right, Mrs. Fletcher.”

Then we see who the murderer is.

Jessica presents the theory that he let himself into the house and found the sampler while he was looking for the den. Being a cryptographer, he recognized the simple code and knew at once what it meant. Benny surprised him and was an excitable person. Mr. Andrews figured he could kill Benny to keep him quiet and return later, so he killed Benny, then stole the sampler on his way out in order to prevent anyone else from figuring out the secret.

Mr. Andrews points out that this is pure conjecture and he will swear that he knew the location through other sources. Jessica then points out earlier when he revealed he knew the location of the light switch despite it being in a stupid location since he found it in a few seconds, in the dark.

He crumbles at this and admits his guilt. He asks if he can take a look at the contents of the hiding place, and Amos says that it can’t hurt and he is curious, himself. Andrews looks inside and find a box which contains a very old letter. Andrews says that if his theory is correct, the document will prove that Benedict Arnold was under the direct orders of George Washington when he surrendered West Point to the British.

It turns out to be an angry letter from Benedict Arnold’s mistress saying that he betrayed not only his country, but his mistress with one of her maids.

Andrews remarks, “It’s ironic. It seems that I, too, was betrayed by Benedict Arnold.”

The episode ends in Jessica’s house, where she makes a present of the chess set from Tillie’s house that Seth fell in love with because it was an 18th century British chess set with intricate workmanship—he saw one like it in a museum once. After Seth thanks Jessica in a very unpracticed way, they sit down to a game of chess and we go to credits.

This was better than the last two episodes, but it was not one of the greats. It’s also much better in the way I related it, with most of the scenes of anyone with the last name Tibble in them left out. Both generations of Tibbles were terrible, the older generation focused on greed and the younger generation on greed and lust (I’m counting Wilton’s assistant as an dishonorary Tibble for these purposes). Emily Goshen was unpleasant in every scene she was in and Liza Adams really should have been shot. Eve Simpson, who is, as always, a comedic figure, was practically having a panic attack in every scene instead of being funny. That’s the majority of the characters in the episode.

Standing against this, Seth was a lot of fun. He’s often a curmudgeon, but in this episode his sense of humor wasn’t nearly as biting as it often is and his detachment was, most of the time, detached amusement. He was one of the bright points of the episode.

Amos Tupper was also fun in this episode. He wasn’t at his best, but he was in good form. (As a side note, this is the last episode he appears in.)

Cabot Cove outside of Jessica’s house didn’t show up too much, but Jessica’s house did show up a lot, which is always pleasant because it’s familiar and homely. Jessica is at her best in Cabot Cove, and especially in her home.

Alistair Andrews, the Benedict-Arnold loving Brit, was mostly enjoyable. He was constantly impatient, which wasn’t great thought it was necessary to the plot, and at least he was impatient in a very polite way. It also helped to give him character flaws which make him turning to murder more plausible. It was not wildly plausible, but by Murder, She Wrote standards it was in character. It at least wasn’t directly contrary to both his immediate and long-term interests, though, unfortunately, it wasn’t directly in line with them, either. It would probably have made more sense to just offer to pay Benny for the letter, or at least a copy of it—it would not have been hugely valuable to anyone else—but he was shown to be impatient and to not have the greatest self discipline. Also, fun fact: the author who played Alistair Andrews played Robin Hood in the 1973 Disney movie of the same name where Robin Hood was a fox and Little John was a bear.

There were a few plot holes in the story, though not really major ones. It doesn’t make any sense how Liza Adams heard of her great aunt’s death and got to Cabot Cove so quickly. The last anyone had heard of her was around the time of Woodstock (the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was in 1969, which was 19 years before this episode). No one even knew if she was dead or alive. Since she showed up on the night of Tillie’s funeral, this gives us a rough idea of how much time she had to show up—about a week, at most. How on earth did the news of Tillie’s death reach wherever Liza was in that time? We can expect that there was an obituary for Tillie in the Cabot Cove Gazette, but I doubt that’s a daily paper and its circulation is going to be limited to Cabot Cove. It’s hardly likely that Jessica would have put a notice in more major newspapers, though to be fair that was the thing to do if you have no idea where the relatives are. That said, even if she did, I can’t imagine that Liza would regularly read the obituary section of major newspapers. And she didn’t seem like the sort to have friends, let alone friends who would read the newspaper and tell her about it. (I’m not counting this has a major plot hole, by the way, because the episode would have been improved had Liza been written out of it, and that would certainly have solved this problem.)

It’s also never explained how Alistair Andrews managed to make a duplicate key to the house for himself. How would he have stolen the key to have a duplicate made? I suppose he could have stolen it from Eve Simpson; this is not as hard to work around as Liza Adams hearing of her great Aunt’s death. It would have been nice to have it addressed, though.

Another minor plot hole is that it’s not explained why Benny showed up to the house at night (the night he was murdered) despite not having a key and thus not being able to expect to get in. What possible motive could he have had to go to the house and peer in the windows so late at night?

There’s also the question of why anyone hid this letter from Benedict Arnold’s mistress in the house and kept it secret. I can’t really see a possible motive for this. Still less can I see a motive for it that would extend as far as creating a sampler with secret instructions as a sort of homely treasure map. Who could have thought it valuable but also in need of such secrecy? And since the house belonged to Benedict Arnold’s mistress, why would she write the letter and then not send it but keep it in her own house in a secret hiding spot and then make a low quality sampler as a coded treasure map to it? Who could she want to hide it from? And who could she have wanted to find it?

(On the plus side, Benedict Arnold did actually go through Maine, though I doubt by where present day Cabot Cove would theoretically be, so having a mistress in Maine has some slight historical plausibility.) Still, though there is no obvious solution to this problem, it can be waved away through the quirks of people long dead. Human beings do occasionally do strange things, and when we know so little about them because they’ve been dead for two hundred years, who are we to say that it didn’t make sense to them at the time?

A related problem is why Alistair Andrews removed the sampler. As a cryptographer he could recognize the code, but it wasn’t likely anyone else would have—most of them had seen it for years and took no notice of it. This wasn’t something just discovered in a box, it was hanging on the wall in front of the noses of everyone but Andrews. And, in fact, removing the sampler had the predictable effect of drawing attention to it. This could have been fixed by simply having taken the sampler down to examine it and put it back up slightly wrong because of some mishap, or having disturbed the dust that Emily Goshen never disturbed, or something like that.

Those are the only plot holes that come to mind. Compared to the previous two episodes (A Very Good Year for Murder and Murder Through the Looking Glass), this is doing very well!

Not really a plot hole but just a kind of loose thread, Eve Simpson’s odd behavior of not even asking who was murdered was never explained. It was only ever meant to confuse suspicion, of course, but it’s always nicer when those red herrings get explained in the story.

The main problems with this episode were related to the characters, not the plot.

This episode is marred by a lot of scenes that are both hard to watch because of the characters in them and are also irrelevant to the mystery. Mostly these involve any of the Tibbles and/or Wilton’s assistant, though Emily Goshen is such an unpleasant character that I can’t think of any scene with her in it that’s a good scene. I also don’t understand whether she was meant to be mentally retarded or not. She seemed to understand what was going on some times, but not others. Not understanding why she was arrested for breaking and entering in order to steal something suggests she should be in somebody’s custody who has power of attorney over her. On the other hand, living independently and being hired to do cleaning for an old woman suggests that she was trusted on her own.

One real lesson of this episode is the difference between making a character unpleasant and making him a suspect. Most of the characters were unpleasant, I suspect to try to cast suspicion in their direction. But none of them were given motives. Well, that’s not quite true—Kevin could have murdered his father to inherit the family pawn shop—he asked his father for money to go start his own business in Boston and was refused—and Wilton could have murdered his brother because Benny dismissed him and he thought Kevin might have been easier to manipulate. Neither of these seems a serious possibility, though. Wilton is too delicate to commit murder, and his assistant was only really interested in getting her leg over Kevin (to use a British expression). Kevin was, perhaps, a bit more plausible, except that as a jock type that likes restoring old cars it’s hard to see him coveting a pawn shop—and it would be a hard thing to convert into ready cash.

This brings up a problem with Murder, She Wrote as a game where you’re supposed to guess who did it that applies to the concept of fair play in general but is especially significant in Murder, She Wrote—it’s very hard to account for plot holes when trying to make deductions. There was no way for Kevin or Wilton to get into the house before Benny, but it was kind of a plot hole that Alistair Andrews had a key, too. None of the Tibbles had a plausible motive, but Alistair Andrews’ motive was… not very convincing. If a Tibble had wanted to put an end to Benny, they could have done it anywhere—but there was equally no reason for Benny to go the house at night. This makes guessing the murderer as much an exercise in mind reading as it is in deduction. Even if a particular episode doesn’t have plot holes, since so many other episodes do it still requires telepathy to know that this one is the exception. That said, I suspect that the best we can do is to guess at who the murderer is if there are no plotholes, and merely give ourselves credit anyway if the episode’s murderer required a plot hole to do it.

Next week’s episode is Just Another Fish Story, which is a Grady episode. Those are always fun.